Ancient genomic population structure enables the repatriation of Aboriginal Australians
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Wasef, Sally
Heupink, Tim H
Westaway, Michael C
Rasmussen, Simon
Pardoe, Colin
Fourmile, Gudju Gudju
Young, Michael
Johnson, Trish
Slade, Joan
Kennedy, Roy
Winch, Patsy
Pappin, Mary
Wales, Tapij
Bates, William Badger
Hamilton, Sharnie
Whyman, Neville
Pellekaan, Sheila van Holst
McAllister, Peter J
Tacon, Paul SC
Curnoe, Darren
Li, Ruiqiang
Millar, Craig
Subramanian, Sankar
Willerslev, Eske
Malaspinas, Anna-Sapfo
Sikora, Martin
Lambert, David M
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Abstract
After European colonization, the ancestral remains of Indigenous people were often collected for scientific research or display inmuseumcollections. For many decades, Indigenous people, including NativeAmericans and Aboriginal Australians, have fought for their return. However, many of these remains have no recorded provenance, making their repatriation very difficult or impossible. To determine whether DNA-based methods could resolve this important problem, we sequenced 10 nuclear genomes and 27 mitogenomes from ancient pre-European Aboriginal Australians (up to 1540 years before the present) of known provenance and compared them to 100 high-coverage contemporary Aboriginal Australian genomes, also of known provenance. We report substantial ancient population structure showing strong genetic affinities between ancient and contemporary Aboriginal Australian individuals from the same geographic location. Our findings demonstrate the feasibility of successfully identifying the origins of unprovenanced ancestral remains using genomic methods.
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Science Advances
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4
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12
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Copyright © 2018 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY- NC).
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Genomics
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander archaeology
Indigenous people
Native Americans
Aboriginal Australians
Indigenous ancestral remains
Ancient nuclear genomes