NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists discovered the oldest known DNA and used it to reveal what life was like 2 million years ago in the northern tip of Greenland.
DNA found in Greenland has broken the record for the oldest yet discovered.
Scientists working in Greenland identified the oldest samples of DNA ever found on earth. By analyzing the two-million year old genetic material, they've revealed how northern Greenland was once a wildly different environment than the cold, polar region it is today.
The oldest known functioning gene is found in the enzyme glutamine synthetase, which has a vital role in cells. The genes in a modern human don't all date back to a single point in our history.
In addition to Ardi, a possible direct ancestor, it is possible here to find hominid fossils from as recently as 160,000 years ago—an early Homo sapiens like us—all the way back to Ardipithecus kadabba, one of the earliest known hominids, who lived almost six million years ago.
The percentage of Neanderthal DNA in modern humans is zero or close to zero in people from African populations, and is about 1 to 2 percent in people of European or Asian background.
The new science of population genetics, which uses ancient DNA from skeletons thousands of years old, has made dramatic breakthroughs and we Indians can now trace our ancestry back to around 65,000 years ago when a band of modern humans, or homo sapiens, first made their way from Africa into the subcontinent.
The oldest DNA yet isolated from humans in Africa reveals long-range migrations around 50,000 years ago, which likely played a role in the Middle to Later Stone Age transition.
Viking DNA refers to the genetic material of people who lived in Viking societies, which were active in parts of Europe and Scandinavia several thousand years ago.
Mixing between Asia and Africa
The study revealed that around 1000 CE, a stream of migrants from Southwest Asia intermingled with African people at multiple locations along the Swahili coast, contributing close to half of the ancestry of the analyzed ancient individuals.
East Asians seem to have the most Neanderthal DNA in their genomes, followed by those of European ancestry. Africans, long thought to have no Neanderthal DNA, were recently found to have genes from the hominins comprising around 0.3 percent of their genome.
Certain regions have higher percentages; the region of Tuscany in Italy has the highest ratio of Neanderthal DNA in the world, indicating that Neanderthal-human interbreeding was likely most prevalent there. Neanderthals were not only in Europe, however, and some Asian populations have as much as 5% Neanderthal DNA.
Neanderthals arose about 430,000 years ago, living in Europe and central Asia until their demise some 40,000 years ago. Thanks to genetic studies, we know that modern humans interbred with Neanderthals after they left Africa, leaving traces in each other's DNA.
Lake Mungo. The oldest human remains in Australia were found at Lake Mungo in south-west New South Wales, part of the Willandra Lakes system. This site has been occupied by Aboriginal people from at least 47,000 years ago to the present.
Evidence still suggests that all modern humans are descended from an African population of Homo sapiens that spread out of Africa about 60,000 years ago but also shows that they interbred quite extensively with local archaic populations as they did so (Neanderthal and Denisovan genes are found in all living non-Africa ...
Looking at Y-DNA studies, it would seem that East Asian paternal lineages expanded in Asia approximately 50,000 years ago. People bearing genetic markers ancestral such as C, D, N, and O, as well as P (specifically Q), came through the Himalayan mountain range and proceeded to Southeast Asia.
If we are speaking ethnically, the closest people to a Viking in modern-day terms would be the Danish, Norwegians, Swedish, and Icelandic people. Interestingly though, it was common for their male Viking ancestors to intermarry with other nationalities, and so there is a lot of mixed heritage.
“A lot of the Vikings are mixed individuals” with ancestry from both Southern Europe and Scandinavia, for example, or even a mix of Sami (Indigenous Scandinavian) and European ancestry.
New research shows that the Irish definitely have their fair share of Viking heritage–in fact, the Irish are more genetically diverse than most people may assume. The Irish have Viking and Norman ancestry in similar proportions to the English.
Humans first evolved in Africa, and much of human evolution occurred on that continent. The fossils of early humans who lived between 6 and 2 million years ago come entirely from Africa. Most scientists currently recognize some 15 to 20 different species of early humans.
The First Humans
One of the earliest known humans is Homo habilis, or “handy man,” who lived about 2.4 million to 1.4 million years ago in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Modern Egyptians share 8% of their genome with central Africans, far more than ancient ones, according to the study, published in the journal Nature Communications. The influx of sub-Saharan genes only occurred within the last 1,500 years.
She compared the genomes of 344 individuals in Northern Territory, Papua New Guinea, South East Asia - and India. She estimates that the Indians contributed nearly 10% to the Australian Aboriginal genomes.
The oldest inhabitants of India are considered to be Negritoes. Perhaps they were the first of the racial groups that came to India. They got settled in the hilly areas of Kerala and the Andaman Islands. Kadar, Irula and Puliyan tribes of Kerala resemble to a great extent with the Negritos.
They were inhabited by Dravidians, indigenous Indians. However, around four thousand years ago, the Indus Valley Civilization was in decline, and a new people, the Aryans, moved in. Historians debate over whether this migration took place as a violent conquest or a slow transition.