Abstract
BackgroundAn early dispersal of biologically and behaviorally modern humans from their African origins to Australia, by at least 45 thousand years via southern Asia has been suggested by studies based on morphology, archaeology and genetics. However, mtDNA lineages sampled so far from south Asia, eastern Asia and Australasia show non-overlapping distributions of haplogroups within pan Eurasian M and N macrohaplogroups. Likewise, support from the archaeology is still ambiguous.ResultsIn our completely sequenced 966-mitochondrial genomes from 26 relic tribes of India, we have identified seven genomes, which share two synonymous polymorphisms with the M42 haplogroup, which is specific to Australian Aborigines.ConclusionOur results showing a shared mtDNA lineage between Indians and Australian Aborigines provides direct genetic evidence of an early colonization of Australia through south Asia, following the "southern route".
Highlights
An early dispersal of biologically and behaviorally modern humans from their African origins to Australia, by at least 45 thousand years via southern Asia has been suggested by studies based on morphology, archaeology and genetics
The complete Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing indicate that both Australians and New Guineans exclusively belongs to the outof-Africa founder types M and N, descended from the same African emigrants ~50 to 70 Kilo Years Before Present (kyBP), as all other Eurasians [24]
The deep divergence (i.e. 55.2 ± 10.8 kyBP) of the Indian and Australian branches within M42, coupled with the evidence of the earliest and most pronounced population expansion outside Africa in Southern Asia estimated to ~52 kyBP using Bayesian Skyline analysis [46] followed by high mtDNA diversity in Indian populations [2,4,10,15,27,33], strongly suggest that Australia perhaps along with East/Southeast Eurasia and Papua New Guinea [24] was populated from Southern Asia plausibly slightly before or in the beginning of the population expansion that has given rise to a large number of mtDNA lineages within macrohaplogroup 'M' in India
Summary
An early dispersal of biologically and behaviorally modern humans from their African origins to Australia, by at least 45 thousand years via southern Asia has been suggested by studies based on morphology, archaeology and genetics. Recent genetic studies (especially those based on mitochondrial DNA) suggest single "southern route" dispersal of modern humans, extended from the Horn of Africa, across the mouth of the Red Sea into Arabia and southern Asia some time before 50 ky [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. The major challenge to this scenario is to document individual steps in this colonization process based on genetics and archaeological evi-
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