Aboriginal mitogenomes reveal 50,000 years of regionalism in Australia

Aboriginal Australians represent one of the longest continuous cultural complexes known. Archaeological evidence indicates that Australia/New Guinea was initially settled ~50 thousand years ago (kya); however, little is known about the processes underlying the enormous linguistic and phenotypic diversity within Australia. Here we report 111 mitogenomes from historic Aboriginal Australian hair samples, whose provenance enables the reconstruction of Australian phylogeographic history prior to European settlement. Marked geographic patterns and deep splits across the major mitochondrial haplogroups imply that the peopling of Australia comprised a single, rapid migration along the east and west coasts that reached southern Australia by >49-45 kya. Following continent-wide colonisation, strong regional patterns developed and have survived despite significant climatic and cultural change during the late Pleistocene and Holocene. Remarkably, we find evidence for the continuous presence of populations in discrete locales back to ~50 kya, consonant with the critical Aboriginal Australian cultural attachment to Country.