Ancient DNA Sheds New Light on Africa's Stone Age

Amazing stuff!

"Ancient DNA dating to between 16,000–18,000 years ago—the oldest human DNA to be extracted in Africa so far—reveals that populations of hunter-gatherers mixed and mingled 50,000 to 20,000 years ago, moving long distances across the continent. This supports the idea that demographic changes played a role in the transition from the Middle to the Later Stone Age, a time when new types of tools emerged and information was exchanged over long distances, a study published today (February 23) in Nature reports. ...
While the first complete Neanderthal mitochondrial genome was sequenced in 2008 from a 38,000 year-old individual excavated from Vindija Cave, Croatia, scientists only recovered the first DNA from human fossils in Africa in 2015. ...
“This is a very important study that reaffirms patterns we find from ancient DNA research in Europe and Asia, that what we thought were long lasting and settled populations in fact have unexpectedly complex and dynamic roots,” ..."

From the abstract:

"Multiple lines of genetic and archaeological evidence suggest that there were major demographic changes in the terminal Late Pleistocene epoch and early Holocene epoch of sub-Saharan Africa. Inferences about this period are challenging to make because demographic shifts in the past 5,000 years have obscured the structures of more ancient populations. Here we present genome-wide ancient DNA data for six individuals from eastern and south-central Africa spanning the past approximately 18,000 years (doubling the time depth of sub-Saharan African ancient DNA), increase the data quality for 15 previously published ancient individuals and analyse these alongside data from 13 other published ancient individuals. The ancestry of the individuals in our study area can be modeled as a geographically structured mixture of three highly divergent source populations, probably reflecting Pleistocene interactions around 80–20 thousand years ago, including deeply diverged eastern and southern African lineages, plus a previously unappreciated ubiquitous distribution of ancestry that occurs in highest proportion today in central African rainforest hunter-gatherers. Once established, this structure remained highly stable, with limited long-range gene flow. These results provide a new line of genetic evidence in support of hypotheses that have emerged from archaeological analyses but remain contested, suggesting increasing regionalization at the end of the Pleistocene epoch."

Ancient DNA Sheds New Light on Africa’s Stone Age | The Scientist Magazine® 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.

Ancient DNA and deep population structure in sub-Saharan African foragers (open access)