South Africa: Ancient DNA Increases the Genetic Time Depth of Modern Humans

analysis

It's been about 2000 years since a young boy died on what is today a beach in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province. In the 1960s the child's remains were exposed to wind and rain. It was carefully excavated and taken to the museum in Durban and later to Pietermaritzburg. Over the past four years I have worked with a team of researchers who reconstructed the DNA of the boy from Ballito Bay and other ancient individuals, and what we've discovered changed what we know about deep human history.

The boy lived about 2000 years ago, which helped us to recalculate the time at which humans like us - Homo sapiens - first split or branched from archaic or pre-modern human groups to between 350 000 and 260 000 years ago.

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