A genomic history of aboriginal Australia

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

  • Anna Sapfo Malaspinas
  • Michael C. Westaway
  • Craig Edwin Muller
  • Vitor C. Sousa
  • Oscar Lao
  • Isabel Alves
  • Anders Bergström
  • Georgios Athanasiadis
  • Jade Yu Cheng
  • Jacob E. Crawford
  • Tim H. Heupink
  • Enrico Macholdt
  • Stephan Peischl
  • Stephan Schiffels
  • Sankar Subramanian
  • Joanne L Wright
  • Chiara Barbieri
  • Isabelle Dupanloup
  • Anders Eriksson
  • Irina Pugach
  • Ivan P. Levkivskyi
  • Shengyu Ni
  • Fernando Racimo
  • Yali Xue
  • Farhang A. Aghakhanian
  • Nicolas Brucato
  • Paula Campos
  • Warren Clark
  • Sturla Ellingvåg
  • Gudjugudju Fourmile
  • Pascale Gerbault
  • Darren Injie
  • George Koki
  • Matthew Leavesley
  • Betty Logan
  • Aubrey Lynch
  • Elizabeth A. Matisoo-Smith
  • Peter J. McAllister
  • Alexander J. Mentzer
  • Mait Metspalu
  • Andrea B Migliano
  • Les Murgha
  • Maude E Phipps
  • William Pomat
  • Doc Reynolds
  • Francois-Xavier Ricaut
  • Peter Siba
  • Mark G. Thomas
  • Thomas Wales
  • Colleen Ma'run Wall
  • Stephen J Oppenheimer
  • Chris Tyler-Smith
  • Richard Durbin
  • Joe Dortch
  • Andrea Manica
  • Mikkel H. Schierup
  • Robert A. Foley
  • Marta Mirazón Lahr
  • Claire Bowern
  • Jeffrey D. Wall
  • Thomas Mailund
  • Mark Stoneking
  • Manjinder S. Sandhu
  • Laurent Excoffier
  • David M. Lambert

The population history of Aboriginal Australians remains largely uncharacterized. Here we generate high-coverage genomes for 83 Aboriginal Australians (speakers of Pama-Nyungan languages) and 25 Papuans from the New Guinea Highlands. We find that Papuan and Aboriginal Australian ancestors diversified 25-40 thousand years ago (kya), suggesting pre-Holocene population structure in the ancient continent of Sahul (Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania). However, all of the studied Aboriginal Australians descend from a single founding population that differentiated ~10-32 kya. We infer a population expansion in northeast Australia during the Holocene epoch (past 10,000 years) associated with limited gene flow from this region to the rest of Australia, consistent with the spread of the Pama-Nyungan languages. We estimate that Aboriginal Australians and Papuans diverged from Eurasians 51-72 kya, following a single out-of-Africa dispersal, and subsequently admixed with archaic populations. Finally, we report evidence of selection in Aboriginal Australians potentially associated with living in the desert.

Original languageEnglish
JournalNature
Volume538
Issue number7624
Pages (from-to)207-214
Number of pages8
ISSN0028-0836
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016

ID: 166327445