The skeleton of a man who lived in the southern tip of Africa 2,330 years ago sheds new light on our past as humans and our common genetic ancestor.
The DNA of these bones is one of the oldest that diverged from the common genetic profile of those that have been found in a region where modern humans had already appeared about 200,000 years ago.
The individual’s maternal or mitochondrial DNA was sequenced and has provided the first proof that we all come from Africa. Furthermore, it can serve to develop the human genetic tree with all branches derived from a common “mitochondrial Eve”.
The archaeologist Andrew Smith, from the University of Cape Town, discovered the skeleton in St. Helena’s Bay in 2010, very close to the site where human footprints from 117,000 years ago – called “Eva footprints” – appeared. Then he contacted Professor Vanessa Hayes, an expert in African genomes.
Hayes was then a Professor of Genomic Medicine at the J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego, California. He currently directs the Laboratory for Comparative Human Genomics and Prostate Cancer at the Garvan Institute for Medical Research in Sydney, Australia.
The complete 1.50-meter skeleton was examined by professor and bioanthropologist Alan Morris from the University of Cape Town. According to Morris, the subject was a marine hunter-gatherer. A bony growth in his ear canal, known as surfer’s ear, suggests that he spent much of his time diving in coastal waters in search of food, which fits in with the shells from the same period found near the site and confirms that he was on a regular diet. fish and shellfish base. Osseous arthritis and the condition of his teeth indicate that he was a man in his fifties.
Analysis of DNA extracted from a tooth and a rib showed that the individual, belonging to a presumably extinct lineage, is the oldest relative related to the so-called Mitochondrial Eve. The study underscores the importance of archaeological remains in southern Africa for the origin of humans.
