Thứ Ba, 18 tháng 10, 2016

Are Indigenous Australians The Oldest Civilization?

By: Alexandria Addesso

When ancient civilizations are spoken of Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Mesopotamians usually get brought up. We look to these groups as instrumental in the building of early civilized societies. Yet a recent study coming out of the University of Cambridge has uncovered new information that will change who we recall when thinking about the oldest civilization.

According to this study, aboriginal Australians are the oldest civilization on the planet. Researchers from several different continents studied groups of indigenous Australians and spoke to them about what they themselves knew about their origins. They also extracted DNA samples from the saliva of 83 Aboriginal Australians and 25 Papuans from New Guinea. After the DNA was sequenced it was uncovered that Aboriginal Australians most likely migrated out of Africa approximately 75,000 years ago in comparison to European and Asian ancestral groups who would have made the same migration about 58,000 years ago.



“Our results suggest that, rather than having left in a separate wave, most of the genomes of Papuans and Aboriginal Australians can be traced back to a single ‘Out of Africa’ event which led to modern worldwide populations,” said senior author from the Sanger Institute and University of Cambridge Manjinder Sandhu.

"It was a truly amazing journey that must have demanded exceptional survival skills and bravery," said Professor Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen.
In their trek through Asia to Australia via the landbridge, it is also believed that the oldest civilization on Earth interbred with a Serbian ancestral group called the Denisovans. This was discovered to have taken place around 44,000 years ago, the researchers also found out that Aboriginal Australians separated from Papuans approximately 37,000 years ago, before the Australian land mass separated from New Guinea roughly 10,000 years ago.

Common knowledge, while always common is not always accurate but is always changing. What was believed to be scientifically accurate when we were children is often disproven by the time we are adults. This is the result of inquiring minds constantly questioning everything. Will an even older civilization be uncovered in the next several decades? Stay curious.


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