The first genomic history of Australia’s peopling

Australia has one of the longest histories of continuous human occupation outside Africa. But who exactly were the first people to settle there? Such a question has obvious political implications and has been hotly debated for decades. The first comprehensive genomic study of Aboriginal Australians reveals that they are indeed the direct descendants of Australia's earliest settlers and diverged from their Papuan neighbours about 37'000 years ago (y.a. The study also uncovers several other major findings on early human populations. The research is published today in Nature and is the result of a close collaboration between international research teams and representatives of Aboriginal Australian communities. It includes six researchers from the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics - among whom, lead author Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas and group leader Laurent Excoffier, both from the University of Bern. The early peopling of Australia and the continent's subsequent population history has been a matter of scientific debate for decades.