Until Europeans landed at the end of the 1700s, it was thought that the continent was thought to have been isolated from other populations, but the report shows “evidence of substantial gene flow between Indian populations and Australia about 4,000 years ago”.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany analysed genetic variation from across the genome from Australian Aborigines, New Guineans, Southeast Asians, and Indians reports The Times of India.
“Long before Europeans settled in Australia humans had migrated from the Indian subcontinent to Australia and mixed with Australian Aborigines,” the study said, finding “substantial gene flow from India to Australia 4,230 years ago ie… well before European contact,” it said.
Researcher Irina Pugach added “this date also coincides with many changes in the archaeological record of Australia, which include a sudden change in plant processing and stone tool technologies… and the first appearance of the dingo in the fossil record. Since we detect inflow of genes from India into Australia at around the same time, it is likely that these changes were related to this migration,”
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