The new data reveals a number of interesting findings. On the grand scale and going as far back in time as to shortly after modern humans migrated out of Africa the DNA-sequences show that together the Aboriginal Australians and Papuans split from Europeans and Asians about 58,000 years ago.
Genetic studies have revealed that Aboriginal Australians largely descended from an Eastern Eurasian population wave, and are most closely related to other Oceanians, such as Melanesians.
Getting back to the Australian aborigines, separate research has shown that they have roughly the same Neanderthal DNA component as non-Africans, which indicates they split off after at least the first interbreeding between the two species.
The findings have been published in the Journal of Human Genetics. Dr John Mitchell from La Trobe's Department of Biochemistry and Genetics, who led the study, said the research revealed there was a high level of genetic diversity among Aboriginal Australians.
Mitochondrial DNA is a reliable source of genetic information about Aboriginal ancestry, but it can't help at all if your Aboriginal ancestors sit anywhere else in your family tree. That is, it's only useful to track direct from mother to grandmother to great grandmother, and so on.
Indeed, by 31,000 years ago, most Aboriginal communities were genetically isolated from each other. This divergence was most likely caused by environmental barriers; in particular the evolution of an almost impassable central desert as the Australian continent dried out.
“The USA-based company DNA Tribes recently admitted publicly that the company has no Australian Aboriginal genetic material and it is, therefore, impossible for the company to determine any Aboriginal ancestry by genetic testing,” Prof Langton said. “The company, any company for that matter, simply cannot do it.”
The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.
Results: The Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations had significantly different ABO and RhD distributions (P < 0.001). For Aboriginal individuals, 955/1686 (56.6%) were group O and 669/1686 (39.7%) were group A. In non-Aboriginal individuals, 1201/2657 (45.2%) were group O and 986/2657 (37.1%) were group A.
The three criteria are: being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent identifying as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person being accepted as such by the community in which you live, or formerly lived.
By comparing Aboriginal genomes to other groups, they conclude that Aborigines diverged from Eurasians between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago, after the whole group had already split from Africans.
A new genomic study has revealed that Aboriginal Australians are the oldest known civilization on Earth, with ancestries stretching back roughly 75,000 years.
The broad consensus now is that all modern humans are descended from an African population of Homo sapiens that migrated around the world but bred with local archaic populations as they did so.
Aboriginal peoples
Genetic studies appear to support an arrival date of 50–70,000 years ago. The earliest anatomically modern human remains found in Australia (and outside of Africa) are those of Mungo Man; they have been dated at 42,000 years old.
At the 2021 census, the number of ancestry responses within each standardised group as a proportion of the total population was as follows: 57.2% European (including 46% North-West European and 11.2% Southern and Eastern European), 33.8% (including 29.9% Australian) Oceanian, 17.4% Asian (including 6.5% Southern and ...
The extensive study of Aboriginal people's DNA dates their origins to more than 50,000 years ago and shows that their ancestors were probably the first humans to journey across Asia and cross an ocean. The findings also show that these Aboriginal ancestors remained almost entirely isolated until around 4,000 years ago.
Since legislation for Indigenous people was a state matter, each state found its own definition for 'Aboriginal'. Examples: Western Australia: a person with more than a quarter of Aboriginal blood. Victoria: any person of Aboriginal descent.
Definitions. Aboriginal - `every person who is of the full blood descended from the original inhabitants of Australia, other than a person whose name is removed from the Register of Aborigines'.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders: Australia's First Peoples.
Prehistory. It is generally held that Australian Aboriginal peoples originally came from Asia via insular Southeast Asia (now Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, and the Philippines) and have been in Australia for at least 45,000–50,000 years.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the first peoples of Australia, meaning they were here for thousands of years prior to colonisation.
Aboriginal people can be dark-skinned and broad-nosed, or blonde-haired and blue-eyed. Let's get rid of some myths!
The DNA sequences showed that the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians and Papuans had then split from Europeans and Asians by at least 51,000 years ago. By comparison, the ancestors of Europeans and Asians only became genetically distinct from each other roughly 10,000 years later.
Who Should You Contact to Find Out if You're of Aboriginal Descent? You'll need to contact an incorporated Indigenous organisation where your relatives are from–someone in the community may remember or know your family. An incorporated Indigenous organisation where you live might also give you a letter of confirmation.