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How farmers "conquered" the world

22.05.2018

Agriculture continues to spread in the Stone Age. As new DNA analyzes show, it arrived at that time with one of three major migrations in Southeast Asia. Unlike in Europe, you can still find descendants of hunters and gatherers there today.

Recent analyzes of entire genomes of ancient human DNA from Southeast Asia have shown that there have been at least three large migratory flows into this region over the past 50,000 years. An international team led by researchers from Harvard Medical School and from the University of Vienna around anthropologist Ron Pinhasi extracted the DNA from the remains of 18 individuals who lived in what are now Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia approximately 1,700 to 4,100 years ago. Their results have now been published in Science.

Ancient genomes document multiple waves of migration in Southeast Asian prehistory, Mark Lipson, Olivia Cheronet, Swapan Mallick, Nadin Rohland, Marc Oxenham, Michael Pietrusewsky, Thomas Oliver Pryce, Anna Willis, Hirofumi Matsumura, Hallie Buckley, Kate Domett, Nguyen Giang Hai, Trinh Hoang Hiep, Aung Aung Kyaw, Tin Tin Win, Baptiste Pradier, Nasreen Broomandkhoshbacht, Francesca Candilio, Piya Changmai, Daniel Fernandes, Matthew Ferry, Beatriz Gamarra, Eadaoin Harney, Jatupol Kampuansai, Wibhu Kutanan, Megan Michel, Mario Novak, Jonas Oppenheimer, Kendra Sirak, Kristin Stewardson, Zhao Zhang, Pavel Flegontov, Ron Pinhasi, David Reich. In: Science

Doi: http://science.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aat3188 

Copyright: Lorna Tilley, Australian National University