The origin of Aboriginal Australian

We present the first Aboriginal Australian genomic sequence, obtained from a lock of hair donated by an Aboriginal man living in South-Western Australia in the early 20th century. The genome was sequenced to an average depth of 11x, showing no evidence of European admixture, and an estimated contamination level of < 0.5%. It represents the first high-depth ancient genome sequence from outside the permafrost regions. Using population genetic approaches based on whole genome data, we find evidence that: i) all non-African populations diverged from West Africans at the same time; ii) Aboriginal Australians were the first to separate from this ancestral non-African gene pool some 50-60 thousand years ago, 10-25 thousand years prior to the split between Europeans and Asians; iii) Aboriginal Australians received substantial gene flow from Asians at a later date, suggesting that the Neanderthal genetic signal in the Aboriginal Australian genome, similar to that found in Eurasians, may be secondarily derived. Our findings imply that current views on the population history of Aboriginal Australian based on uniparental markers and SNP chip data are over simplistic. As such our understanding of modern human evolutionary history will likely benefit from being revisited using ancient and modern human genomics.