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Genetic study finds three native Amazonian tribes share more DNA with Australian Aborigines than any other present-day population

Researchers found people belonging to the Suruí, Karitiana and Xavante peoples in the Amazon are more closely related to indigenous populations in Australia than any other modern group.

The new findings suggest their descendants may have ranged far further and could have crossed the vast ocean expanse between Australia and south America.

Professor David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School who led the study, said: 'It's incredibly surprising.

About 2 per cent of the ancestry of Amazonians today comes from this Australian lineage that's not present in the same way elsewhere in the Americas.'

The researchers, whose work is published in the journal Nature, analysed the DNA from 21 Native American populations in Central and South America.

Photo: Xavante man/ Aboriginal man

They also collected and analysed DNA from nine populations in Brazil before comparing it to the genomes of people from 200 non-American populations.

They found the Tupí-speaking Suruí people who first came into contact with the modern world in 1969, the Karitiana tribe, who live in western Amazon, and the Ge-speaking Xavante people in Eastern Brazil, all had genetic links to indigenous Australians.
 Source

Responses to "Native tribes in the Amazon found to be most closely related to indigenous Australians"

  1. Sara says:

    beautiful people

  2. alistair says:

    fascinating anthropology

  3. edgar cayce said the australoids were the first homo sapiens in americas and mu...india australia etc.

  4. BBC article on youtube also states this re indigenes in the tip of pata gonia etc.

  5. South America and Australia were once Iinked together as one continent known as Gondwana land which over millions of years drifted apart.

  6. The Aboriginal people did not enter Australia until about 50,000 years ago. Speculation, but it would appear that when that branch of humans began moving out of Africa, one group went north and east and another went west. That means they would have had boats.

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