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Weren't Australian Aboriginals isolated for tens of thousands of years and some full blooded individuals still exist today? How could they have an ancestor outs

Weren't Australian Aboriginals isolated for tens of thousands of years and some full blooded individuals still exist today? How could they have an ancestor outside Australia in only 1400 BC?

andi999 6y ago
Well, the article talks a lot about 'our ancestry' and not all of mankind. So probably it applies only to 'us'(Europeans and US) and not 'them'. Ok, probably it was just lazy science and no politicsl agenda.
nsajko 6y ago
The entire linked Nature paper is freely accessible. It's just a simulation, but they say this: > No large group is known to have maintained complete reproductive isolation for extended periods. The paper's conclusion: > Given the remaining uncertainties about migration rates and real-world mating patterns, the date of the MRCA for everyone living today cannot be identified with great precision. Nevertheless, our results suggest that the most recent common ancestor for the world’s current population lived in the relatively recent past—perhaps within the last few thousand years. And a few thousand years before that, although we have received genetic material in markedly different proportions from the people alive at the time, the ancestors of everyone on the Earth today were exactly the same. > Further work is needed to determine the effect of this common ancestry on patterns of genetic variation in structured populations. But to the extent that ancestry is considered in genealogical rather than genetic terms, our findings suggest a remarkable proposition: no matter the languages we speak or the colour of our skin, we share ancestors who planted rice on the banks of the Yangtze, who first domesticated horses on the steppes of the Ukraine, who hunted giant sloths in the forests of North and South America, and who laboured to build the Great Pyramid of Khufu.
Gibbon1 6y ago
Odd stuff I've read. There wasn't no contact. But contact was very limited. It's northern Australia is 100-300 miles from parts of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, etc. Also also genes that don't confer any particular advantage tend to peter out when inserted into large populations. Above my pay grade but I think that argues that the genetic difference that do exist tend to either not confer any particular advantage, like maybe shape of your nose, hair color. Or confer some limited advantage, skin pigmentation for instance seems to be strongly associated with solar radiation and dietary availability of Folic Acid and Vit D.
- wahern 6y ago
  > not confer any particular advantage, like maybe shape of your nose Nose shapes are selected for by temperature and humidity. That's probably not the only selection pressure, but it's a major one.
- gdrift 6y ago
  > genes that don't confer any particular advantage tend to peter out when inserted into large populations Not sure that's true. Natural selection is not the only force driving evolution. Neutral and nearly neutral (slightly deleterious) alleles can be fixed in a population by random genetic drift. Source: https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2020/10/on-importance-of-random-genetic-drift.html https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2020/10/on-importance-of-rando...
martinleslie 6y ago
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/aboriginal-australians-have-been-genetically-isolated-20-000-years-a6895686.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/aboriginal-austra... agrees with you

Weren't Australian Aboriginals isolated for tens of thousands of years and some full blooded individuals still exist today? How could they have an ancestor outside Australia in only 1400 BC?

andi999 6y ago

Well, the article talks a lot about 'our ancestry' and not all of mankind. So probably it applies only to 'us'(Europeans and US) and not 'them'. Ok, probably it was just lazy science and no politicsl agenda.

nsajko 6y ago

The entire linked Nature paper is freely accessible. It's just a simulation, but they say this: > No large group is known to have maintained complete reproductive isolation for extended periods. The paper's conclusion: > Given the remaining uncertainties about migration rates and real-world mating patterns, the date of the MRCA for everyone living today cannot be identified with great precision. Nevertheless, our results suggest that the most recent common ancestor for the world’s current population lived in the relatively recent past—perhaps within the last few thousand years. And a few thousand years before that, although we have received genetic material in markedly different proportions from the people alive at the time, the ancestors of everyone on the Earth today were exactly the same. > Further work is needed to determine the effect of this common ancestry on patterns of genetic variation in structured populations. But to the extent that ancestry is considered in genealogical rather than genetic terms, our findings suggest a remarkable proposition: no matter the languages we speak or the colour of our skin, we share ancestors who planted rice on the banks of the Yangtze, who first domesticated horses on the steppes of the Ukraine, who hunted giant sloths in the forests of North and South America, and who laboured to build the Great Pyramid of Khufu.

Gibbon1 6y ago

Odd stuff I've read. There wasn't no contact. But contact was very limited. It's northern Australia is 100-300 miles from parts of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, etc. Also also genes that don't confer any particular advantage tend to peter out when inserted into large populations. Above my pay grade but I think that argues that the genetic difference that do exist tend to either not confer any particular advantage, like maybe shape of your nose, hair color. Or confer some limited advantage, skin pigmentation for instance seems to be strongly associated with solar radiation and dietary availability of Folic Acid and Vit D.

wahern 6y ago
> not confer any particular advantage, like maybe shape of your nose Nose shapes are selected for by temperature and humidity. That's probably not the only selection pressure, but it's a major one.
gdrift 6y ago
> genes that don't confer any particular advantage tend to peter out when inserted into large populations Not sure that's true. Natural selection is not the only force driving evolution. Neutral and nearly neutral (slightly deleterious) alleles can be fixed in a population by random genetic drift. Source: https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2020/10/on-importance-of-random-genetic-drift.html https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2020/10/on-importance-of-rando...

martinleslie 6y ago

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/aboriginal-australians-have-been-genetically-isolated-20-000-years-a6895686.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/aboriginal-austra... agrees with you