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*/Australian Ancestry/*

In */Age and Origin of the Human Species/* I pointed out that
fossil evidence shows the earliest inhabitants (Mungo Man) had a more
modern morphology than later Australians. I have suggested that the
first humans to settle Australia were derived from Eurasian /sapiens/,
albeit they became somewhat hybridized with /erectus/ during their
radiation through the tropics. The much more recent Australian
population typified by the Kow Swamp specimens was so robust, and the
skull features so primitive, that some have argued they were H.
/erectus/. While the weight of opinion seems to be that they are not
/erectus/, it can?t be denied that they manifest many diagnostic
features of that taxon. In fact they have strong affinities to the
Ngandong skulls, which are /erectus/, but show so much /sapiens/
influence that Rightmire excludes them, as atypical, when considering
the spectrum of conserved features that characterize the /erectus/
taxon: */The Evolution of Homo Erectus/*; Cambridge, 1990; see, for
instance, Figure 40, page 196. I have suggested that the Ngandong
specimens were an /erectus-sapiens/ hybrid type, and representative of
the population that migrated into Australia and left the Kow Swamp
fossils. Having lived in close association with tropical S E Asian
/erectus/ for over 20,000 years, the Kow Swamp type was *much* more
affected by hybridization than the population that originally settled
Australia.

Lightly shaded areas, on the map below, were above sea-level during
the last glacial epoch, when so much water was locked up in ice. From
after 30 kya until 12 kya, S E Asia was almost connected to Australia,
which was joined to New Guinea until 8 kya. Of course, sea levels were
lowest during and shortly after glacial maximum, and the channels
separating Australia from Asia were then at their minimum width. It was
during this era that the Kow Swamp type, erectus-hybrid population was
able to migrate into Australia.

Fig. 1, [Map from Ingman and Gyllensten; */Mitochondrial Genome
Variation and Evolutionary History of Australian and New Guinean
Aborigines/*; Genome Research 13:1600-6, 2003]

The /original /colonists of Australia arrived much earlier. Dates
as early as 62 kya have been attributed to the oldest human fossil in
Australia (Mungo Man; LM3) but in */Nature/* (Feb 20, 2003) a
multidisciplinary team reported 42 kya. It is evident, just from the
location of the find, that Mungo Man was not among the first to arrive;
nor is it likely that era's only human bodies to be fossilized and
discovered would have been the very earliest people to step ashore.
There was a glacial epoch between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago (/Oxygen
Isotope Stage/ 4) and an ice sheet covered much of the central Asian
plain during that era. About 74,000 years ago Mt. Toba erupted, creating
a broad extinction zone in India and a 'nuclear winter' that lasted for
several years. The effects of Toba and the glacial era seem to have
driven the inhabitants of central Asia south. Hoffecker states, in
*/Desolate Landscapes: Ice Age Settlement in Eastern Europe, /*on page
19, that, /"The scarcity of artifacts in the loess bed that overlies the
/[central Asian plain]/ suggests that much of the plain was abandoned
between 73,000-55,000 years ago."/ I have suggested that there was a
massive migration of advanced Eurasian archaic sapiens, out of central
Asia, into S W Asia, N Africa, and India. I believe that elements of
this radiating population reached and colonized Australia during the
/OIS/ 4 era, which is plausible, as sea-levels were relatively low then.
Conversely, suggested later dates for first settlement are less
credible, due to the difficulty of crossing wider ocean expanses as the
ice melted and sea-levels rose.

There is genetic evidence for Australian colonization during /OIS/
4 in */Mitochondrial Genome Variation and Evolutionary History of
Australian and New Guinean Aborigines/* (Ingman & Gyllensten,2003). They
state that the *"estimate of a genetic coalescent for Australian
Aborigines with individuals from outside Australia based on
mitochondrial HVS1 sequences ranges from 60,000 to 119,000 years,
depending on which substitution rate is used".* They note that other
research, on mtDNA D-loop sequences yields a range of *51,000 to 85,000
years ago, for an "expansion date"*. The expansion date is when a small
founding population began to multiply significantly. They give an *mtDNA
coalescence date for the N macrohaplogroup*, which includes all but one
Australian lineage, *as* *71,000 years ago*, with a confidence interval
of plus or minus 12,000 years. T*he M haplogroup's was 78,000 years
ago*, with the same confidence interval. So the evidence indicates that
Australia was settled during /OIS/ 4.

Mishmar (2003) gives a coalescent for /both/ M and N as 65 kya,
which is within the confidence interval op cit. I interpret that data to
mean that most of the ancient Eurasian mtDNA lineages were lost, either
during the era of Mt. Toba?s eruption, or by subsequent lineage sorting.
As an example of the latter, the LM3 mtDNA lineage, *which is the most
ancient human mtDNA lineage known*, survived at least until 42 kya among
migrants to Australia, but was lost sometime before the present.

Afrocentrists have argued that the original Australian population
came 'Out of Africa', while, on my view they came from Eurasia. It is
indisputable that the Australian mtDNA derives from macrohaplogroups M
and N (Ingman & Gyllensten, 2003), which are Eurasian lineages. It is
true that a few African populations' lineages have affinities to M and
N, and afrocentrists interpret that to mean M and N diverged from the
African genome. I argue that the evidence and time constraints indicate
M and N lineages were carried into Africa by Eurasian radiation: see
*/Plural Lineages in the Human mtDNA Genome/* (on site). Note that /all
but one/ mtDNA lineage in Australia is derived from the N
macrohaplogroup, which contains the *European lineages.* In other words,
to argue that the first Australians were Africans, requires one to
assume that M and N /are/ derived from the African genome, rather than
being indigenous to Eurasia: I contend */Plural Lineages /*falsifies the
assumption of a single African source for all modern mtDNA.

There are a few African populations that have some mtDNA with
affinities to M and N, and you can see examples of them on the branches
under box 2, such as the Yoruba. The afrocentrist who drew the 'tree'
below has assumed that the African mtDNA is ancestral to the Eurasian.
However, LM3, the oldest known mtDNA, is Eurasian!

Macrohaplogroups M and N are in the dotted-line boxes of the
graphic below: N is 1; M is 2. You?ll note that ALL the lineages within
the boxes are Eurasian. That sole M lineage is most plausibly associated
with a more recent radiation that occupied New Guinea. It is remarkable
that the migrants who settled Australia were derived /specifically/ from
the population that later became Europeans, suggesting that the first
settlers of Australia began their migration AFTER the M and N
haplogroups diverged. Of course, it is possible the M haplogroup /could/
have been present in the proto-Australian population and was lost by
lineage sorting. After all, Mungo?s mtDNA is unlike ANY modern lineage!
In other words, the population that first came to Australia included at
least one type of mtDNA that has since been lost, *and does NOT
correspond to any of the extant, and supposedly ancestral, African
lineages*. One sequence from Mungo?s mitochondria found its way into the
nuclear DNA of ancient humans and is carried, on chromosome 11, by many
contemporary people. The extraction of mtDNA from LM3 was reported by
Adcock, et al. and published as */Mitochondrial DNA sequences in ancient
Australians: implications for modern human origins./* It was printed in
*Proceedings of the National Academy of Science*, USA 98 (2001) page
540. Figure 2, below from Ingman and Gyllensten, 2003, loc. sit;
reproduced by them, from Saitou and Nei, 1987.

The ''implications for human origins'' are that modern humans are
NOT 'all Africans'! African replacement is contraindicated by the
population distribution of the relic mtDNA sequence inserted in
chromosome 11. In */A Nuclear ?Fossil? of the Mitochondrial D-loop and
the origin of Modern Humans/*, by Hans Zischler, et al, published in
*Nature *378:489-492, page 491, we read,*/?Overall, 39% of chromosomes
tested carried the insertion. In four African populations, the frequency
of chromosomes carrying the insertion ranges between 10 and 25%, whereas
it varies between 38% and 78% in populations tested in Europe, Asia,
Oceania, and South America.?/* The highest frequency of insertions were
among the Japanese  at  65%; an Amerind tribe (Surui)  at  78% and the
Melanesians  at  68%: Europeans were  at  54%. Clearly, this insertion of
/ancient, indigenous Eurasian/ mtDNA, into the nuclear DNA, occurred
outside of Africa, probably in N E Asia. Since the proto-Australians
/carried/ the mtDNA lineage that was inserted, it is more likely that
they were an Eurasian population. Nuclear DNA, as discussed below,
practically excludes the possibility that Australians are derived from
Africans. Therefore, since Australian mtDNA is derived from the N
lineage, and LM3 from the /insert/, there is no justification for the
assumption that M and N are of African origin. This evidence is more
consistent with the view that those lineages were carried INTO Africa by
the radiation of Eurasian humans (H. /sapiens sapiens/). Only the
unjustified assumption that ALL modern mtDNA comes from a single,
African source allows the presumption that M and N are African-derived.

Previous sequence analyses of the chromosome 11 /insert/ had
revealed NO allelic variation in any sample from any part of the world.
While exhaustive analysis indicates that the LM3 sequence derives from
the same mtDNA lineage that engendered the /insert/, there are 14
nucleotide differences. The range of differences between the LM3
sequence and contemporary sequences is at the upper end of the range of
differences between contemporary sequences. Since the number of
differences is a proxy of age, we can infer that LM3 was as old as the
older African lineages by /42,000 years ago!/ The range of differences
between the /insert/ sequence and contemporary sequences extends well
*beyond* the range of differences between contemporary sequences. This
indicates that the lineage leading to the /insert /sequence diverged
well before the most recent common ancestor of living human mtDNA
sequences. In other words, the LM3 lineage is as old as the 'African
Eve', and the /insert/ is */far/* older than LM3 ... perhaps as much as
14 mutations older!

Because mtDNA accrues variation much more rapidly than nuclear
sites, and because there was no observed allelic variation in the
/insert/, it is plausible that those 14 differences accrued to the LM3
mtDNA lineage *since* the era of the insertion event. Thus, it is
evident that insertion occurred /long/ before the coalescence of the
most ancient African mtDNA lineages. Given the geographical distribution
of that chromosome 11 insertion, It is hard to imagine stronger evidence
for the continuity of archaic Eurasian populations. Even afrocentrists
concede that by implication, as in this tree of mtDNA lineages.

Fig. 3; Klein and Takahata, */WHERE DO WE COME FROM? The Molecular
Evidence for Human Descent/*, page 281.

The length of the line, from left to right, corresponds to the
estimated time-depth of that lineage. Note that the insertion 'branch'
extends far to the right of the most ancient African mtDNA lineages, as
well as the Neanderthal specimen. Even so, I think the scale understates
the insertion?s antiquity, as 14 mutations, plus the 40 thousand year
age of the Mungo specimen, represents an immense time-span! In an
equivalent sequence of that Feldhofer /neanderthal /specimen, Krings et
al. found ''11 transitional differences from the [modern human]
reference sequence''(as reported in */DNA sequence of the mitochondrial
hypervariable region II from the Neandertal type specimen/*, PNAS Vol.
96, 5581-85, May 11, 99). Approximately half those differences may have
accrued through changes in the human lineage. By contrast, it is hardly
possible that as many differences accumulated in the chromosome 11
insert as occurred in the LM3 lineage, because nuclear DNA changes much
more slowly than mtDNA, let alone the hyper-variable region.
Accordingly, we may infer that *the coalescent between the LM3 lineage
and the chromosome 11 insert is */*significantly* *older than the most
recent common ancestor of humans and Neanderthals. */Krings estimates
the mtDNA of humans and Neanderthals began to diverge 465,000 years ago;
add in the 40,000 year age of LM3 and it is looks as if *the insertion
on chromosome 11 occurred at least half a million years ago*, or even a
million, as Kring?s upper age estimate is 741,000 years ago!

Here is the lineage diagram Adcock presents. Note the tree is
rooted in the common ancestor of Homo and Pan; the Neanderthal lineage
is separate from H/ss/; and one of the Australian fossils robust types
is also shown as distinct from all other modern human lineages. I
contend such specimens resulted from hybridization with Asian /erectus/.

Figure 4, from Adcock, 2001, op cit

As noted, the modern Australians? mtDNA comes from macrohaplogroup
N (and, to a minor extent, from M) and that they have affinities to
Europeans. That is remarkable, when you consider that the original
settlers must have lived in S E Asia for some time, and that later waves
of migration to Australia show strong affinities to the
/erectus-sapien/-hybrid Ngandong population. In fact, that tends to
corroborate the view I expressed in */Age and Origin/*: Eurasian
/sapiens/ radiated through the tropics, interbreeding with indigenous
/erectus/, and later migrations displaced the most primitive of those
hybrid populations.

As the afrocentrists claim the M and N lineages diverged from the
African mtDNA genome in N E Africa, it is instructive to compare the
*nuclear* DNA of Africans and Australians. On page 75 of */The History
and Geography of Human Genes/* (Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi & Piazza;
Princeton, '94) we find that Africans and the people of Australia & New
Guinea are the *most UN-related* populations on the face of the earth!
The Bantu and N. Guineans have a genetic distance of 3372, while the
Australians are 3272, exceeded only by the Thai at 3364. To put these
units of genetic distance into perspective, consider that Europeans are
separated by distances two or three*/ orders of magnitude less! /English
and Italians are separated by only 4 units*, compared to the 3,272 units
that separate the Australians from typical Africans. Even the Basques
and Greeks are only separated by 5 units; the Lapps and Danes by 204.
There is another common method of calculating genetic distance, and it
is expressed in a different numerical scale. The same authors used that
method too, and it yielded equivalent results: Africans and the
Australians are the most UNrelated populations on earth.

*     IF* Africans settled Australia *and* M & N macro-haplogroups are
African derived, one might suppose that the Australians would be
substantially more closely related to the African populations that have
some mtDNA lineages with affinities to the M and N haplogroups. But,
compare the people of Australia and N.G. /specifically/ to the Africans
that are descended from the population /supposed/ to have been ancestral
to the M and N macrohaplogroups: the Yoruba for instance. The Yoruba?s
distance from the /most/ unrelated west-African group is only 398. The N
E Bantu?s distance to the Bane, at 153, is /less/ than the difference
between groups of Bantu, and the Bane cluster with the Yoruba. Note how
the Bantu {?BNT?} and Bane group (along the 2^nd principle component
axis) while all the northern African populations are separated by the
first principle component. On my view, that is because N African
populations are the ones most affected by gene flow from Eurasian
radiations, especially since the agricultural era. By contrast, the
less-mixed African populations are separated from each other by distance
from the second principle component axis.

Fig. 5, from Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, and Piazza, page 178, op cit.

Bear in mind that the 'genetic distance' figure is based on sound
data: the frequency and distribution of various alleles and
polymorphisms. However, the '/trees/' that authors construct with that
data are usually based on debatable assumptions: that Africans are an
/ancestral /population, and that modern humans are all descended /only/
from H. /sapiens/. *On my view, Africans are a /hybrid/ population,
created by the interbreeding of Eurasian /sapiens/ with H. /erectus/,
just as the Australians were. *In order to accurately reflect the human
lineages, such trees would have to distinguish between the ancestry of
Eurasians and the tropical populations created by recent back-cross
hybridization with remnant erectus. The trees would, in fact have to be
*networks*. To give him his due, Cavalli-Sforza acknowledges that as a
possibility, loc cit page 81. The authors state that, ''a tree with
inter-connections would be highly desirable'', albeit he is apparently
only considering the mingling of modern human populations, rather than
taking /erectus/ into account.

All but 2% of the 'bootstrap' trees generated by Cavalli-Sforza et
al. showed the first separation between Africans and all other
populations, but the way ''all other non-Africans'' grouped is
significant. 1) in 25%, the Australians+NG+Pacific islanders & S E
Asians vs. all other non-Africans; 2) in 24%, Pacific islanders+S E
Asians vs. all other non-Africans; 3) in 15%, Australians+NG vs. all
other non-Africans; 4) in 8%, Europeans+extra-European Caucasoids vs.
all other non-Africans; 5) in 8%, Americans vs. all other non-Africans.
In the other 18% of trees the sub-clusters disintegrate. The authors
say, ''For instance, in some of them New Guineans and Australians part
from each other, one of the two being separated from all other groups in
the second fission''. What is really indicated, as the authors
acknowledge, is ''a trichotomy, separating the three sub-clusters of
NG+Australians; S E Asians + Pacific islanders; and all other
non-Africans. The bottom line: NG/Australians and Africans are the most
unrelated populations on earth, but BOTH of them are very different than
all other non-Africans, with the reservation that there are affinities
between S E Asians and NG/Australians, as might be expected due to
relatively recent population mixing. I contend that the 'out of Africa'
hypothesis cannot account for this. By contrast, the hypothesis that
Australians and Africans are /erectus-sapiens/ hybrid populations, is
completely consistent with such data, even explanatory of it.

A 'principal component map' shows the genetic difference between
European and African populations in a graphic manner that facilitates
appreciation of their minimal relationship, and avoids the unwarranted
assumptions inevitable in the 'trees' that ignore the recent, as well as
ancestral, influence of /erectus/. Ancient Eurasian /sapiens/'
radiations led to /erectus-sapien/ hybrid populations, such as
represented by the Herto skulls in N Africa, and even more advanced
forms in S W Asia. But the well-adapted tropical populations were very
much larger than the radiating Eurasian's, and they absorbed the early
migrations, preserving a great deal of the /erectus/ genome. Later
/sapien/ radiations, especially since the agricultural era, displaced
the most primitive groups, but, to a great extent, those large, hybrid
populations still exist.

Fig. 6, Cavalli-Sforza, et al., page 81, op cit.

Since there is less genetic affinity between Africans and the
populations of Australia and N. Guinea than anyone else in the world, it
is obvious that Africans didn?t settle Australia. That casts doubt on
the afrocentrist assertion that macrohaplogroups M and N are derived
from the African mtDNA genome, and tends to corroborate the view
advanced in */Plural Lineages/*, that M and N are indigenous to Eurasia.

The question naturally arises: why are Australians and Africans so
genetically different if they were both created by Eurasians
interbreeding with /erectus/? I contend that it is because the S E Asian
and African /erectus/ were so long separated, with so little gene flow
between them. */There, as in the mtDNA insert on chromosome 11, are the
/'deep genetic lineages'* the afrocentrists say should exist if the
multiregionalist model is correct! The S E Asian and African /erectus/
genomes were so divergent because they had been separated for over a
million years, and that deep division is only partially unified by both
interbreeding with Eurasians, principally with the population that
became Europeans. That is also why there are some affinities between
Europeans and Africans, in spite of their vast phenotypic differences,
and deep genetic separation. The afrocentrists try to interpret this as
meaning that Africans are ancestral to Europeans, but, for all the
reasons documented in */Age and Origin, Plural Lineages/*, and
elsewhere, that is impossible. In contrast, those affinities are well
explained by my hypothesis of Eurasian radiation *into* Africa, with
interbreeding between /sapiens/ and African /erectus/.

Yet another method of graphic representation reveals the genetic
relationships between Eurasians and Africans. A 'neighbor-joining-tree'
by the cited authors is particularly valid because it is NOT 'rooted';
in other words, no assumptions are made about which population is
ancestral.

Fig. 7 (and following) from Cavalli-Sforza, et al., page 91, op cit.

Three significant aspects of the topology are that the Europeans have
a CENTRAL location, on VERY SHORT branches (d & e), and there is MAXIMUM
SEPARATION between Melansians (which includes Australians) and Africans.
With respect to branch 'e', its minimal length indicates how closely
related the Europeans are to the COMMON ancestor of Asians. One might
interpret the very short 'd' branch as indicating how similar Europeans
are to the original H. /sapiens sapiens/ type, while their central
position could support the same view. One might also view it as
consistent with slight introgressive hybridization (of a common
ancestral, Eurasian H/ss/ type) with archaic /sapiens/ in central Asia
and Europe, leading to differentiation of the Euro-type. I attribute the
long 'c' and 'g' branches to the influence of the archaic, and widely
diverged, remnant /erectus/ genome on both African and Australian/ New
Guinean populations.