Modern humans may descend from two or more genetically distinct streams that split but continued to occasionally mix over time in Africa.
Modern humans arose after a complex history of intermingling between ancestors on at least two different but closely related evolutionary branches, a new study suggests.
"It is exciting that people are starting to model these more complex models and that datasets are becoming available to do this," Carina Schlebusch , a population geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden who did not take part in this research, told Live Science. To shed light on this possibility, scientists analyzed modern human genomes from southern, eastern and western Africa. The study included newly sequenced genomes from 44 members of a southern African group known as the Nama. The Nama are members of the Khoe-San people, who speak a language based on clicking sounds and possess exceptional levels of genetic variants distinct from other modern humans, suggesting their ancestors may have split from those of other modern humans long ago.
The earliest signs the researchers could identify of modern humans diverging into multiple groups in Africa happened about 120,000 to 135,000 years ago, with one population splitting off to become the ancestors of the Nama. Still, before that split, the genetic variation seen in H. sapiens suggests our species consisted of two or more genetically distinct human populations that had been interbreeding for hundreds of thousands of years.
However, the researchers stressed the differences between these ancient groups would have been"almost as low as seen between contemporary human populations," Gravel said.
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