Early anthropologists wrongly placed Aboriginal Australians in the Caucasian race. Genetics reveals they descended from early Homo sapiens leaving Africa ~50,000-65,000 years ago—carrying the oldest continuous genetic lineage outside Africa.
Aboriginals classified as Caucasian branch due to flawed racial framework
Key facts
- Archaeologists classified Aboriginal Australians as a primitive, archaic, or degenerate branch of the Caucasian race
- This classification supported the racial hierarchy with Europeans at the top
- Genetics shows Aboriginal Australians descend from some of the earliest Homo sapiens to leave Africa
- They arrived in Australia around 50,000 to 65,000 years ago when sea levels were lower
- They did not branch off from Caucasians - all non-African populations branch from earlier African populations
- Aboriginals represent the earliest split in the out-of-Africa process
- They preserved genetic lineages that predate many traits associated with Europeans or East Asians
Sources
An Aboriginal Australian Genome Reveals Separate Human ... - PMCpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
We show that Aboriginal Australians are descendants of an early human dispersal into eastern Asia, possibly 62,000 to 75,000 years ago. This dispersal is ...
DNA Study Finds Aboriginal Australians World's Oldest Civilizationhistory.com
An unprecedented DNA study has found evidence of a single human migration out of Africa and confirmed that Aboriginal Australians are the world's oldest ...
Indigenous Australian genomes show deep structure and rich novel ...nature.com
Indigenous Australians probably descend from an early dispersal of humans across Asia, inheriting substantial ancestry from extinct hominin ...
Why Aboriginal Australians are still fighting for recognitionnationalgeographic.com
One genetic study found that today's First Nations people are all related to a common group of ancestors. These ancestors were part of a ...
The Myth of 65 Thousand Years. The Genetic DNA of Aboriginal Mendark-emu-exposed.org
The Australian Aborigines have been in Australia for 60 thousand or 65 thousand years. This would suggest that Aboriginals themselves do not know the year they ...
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