First large-scale ancient DNA study helps reconstruct African population structure

Samples of ancient DNA recovered by University of Bristol scientists on two Indian Ocean islands have helped in the first large scale study of ancient human DNA from sub-Saharan Africa. Africa has long been known as the 'cradle of mankind', but up to now, the genetic information has been largely derived from modern population studies. The findings, published today in Cell by an international research team led by Harvard Medical School, answer several longstanding mysteries and uncover surprising details about sub-Saharan African ancestry. Ancient DNA was extracted from the remains of 16 individuals from 12 locations, ranging from Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa and dating to between 8,100 and 400 years before present. All the remains were presumed to belong to the late Stone Age hunter gatherer/forager populations, that lived in the region before the spread of agricultural societies from the north and west. Excavations in the Zanzibar archipelago (Tanzania), during 2012, undertaken by Professor Mark Horton of the University of Bristol's Department of Anthropology and Archaeology , and a co-author of the paper, with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, recovered remains of three individuals from two caves. The first, Kuumbi Cave, has a sequence of occupation dating back 30,000 years.