This boy’s ethnic group, the Ari, is closely related to a
prehistoric African who lived in the Ethiopian highlands.
HUMAN EVOLUTION
Prehistoric Eurasians streamed
into Africa, genome shows
First genome of an ancient African suggests widespread
mixing with farmers from the Middle East
By Ann Gibbons
A
frica is the birthplace of our species
and the source of ancient migrations
that spanned the globe. But it has
missed out on a revolution in under-
standing human origins: the study of
ancient DNA. Although researchers
have managed to sequence the genomes of
Neandertals from Europe, prehistoric herd-
ers from Asia, and Paleoindians from the
Americas, Africa’s hot and humid climate has
left little ancient DNA intact for scientists to
extract. As a result, “Africa was left out of the
party,” says anthropological geneticist Jason
Hodgson of Imperial College London.
Until now. A paper published online this
week in Science (http://scim.ag/MGLlorente)
reveals the first prehistoric genome from
Africa: that of Mota, a hunter-gatherer man
who lived 4500 years ago in the highlands of
PHOTO: © BEN PIPE/ROBERT HARDING WORLD IMAGERY/CORBIS
Ethiopia. Named for the cave that held the
remains, the Mota genome “is an impressive
feat,” says Hodgson, who was not involved
in the work. It “gives our first glimpse into
what an African genome looked like prior to
many of the recent population movements.”
And when compared with the genomes of liv-
ing Africans, it implies something startling.
Africa is usually seen as a source of outward
migrations, but the genomes suggest a ma-
jor migration into Africa by farmers from the
Middle East, possibly about 3500 years ago.
These farmers’ DNA reached deep into the
continent, spreading even to groups consid-
SCIENCE sciencemag.org
ered isolated, such as the Khoisan of South
Africa and the pygmies of the Congo.
Anthropologists John and Kathryn Arthur
of the University of South Florida, St. Peters-
burg, discovered the skeleton in 2012 at Mota
Cave in southwest Ethiopia after local Gamo
elders led the pair to the cave, a hiding place
for the Gamo during wartime. The Arthurs
unearthed the skeleton of
an adult male beneath a
stone layer and dated it to
4500 years ago using radio-
carbon. The researchers
ETHIOPIA
analyzed the petrous bone
of the inner ear, which can
sometimes preserve more
DNA than other bones.
DNA had indeed sur- AFRICA
vived in the ear bone, per-
haps aided by the cool tem-
peratures in the highland
cave. Researchers were able
to sequence each DNA base more than 12.5
times on average, considered a high-quality
genome. When population geneticist Andrea
Manica and graduate student Marcos Gallego
Llorente at the University of Cambridge in
the United Kingdom analyzed the sequence,
they found that the Mota man had brown
eyes and dark skin, as well as three gene
variants associated with adaptation to high
altitudes; some peaks in the highlands reach
4500 meters, as high as the Matterhorn.
By comparing 250,000 base pairs from
Mota’s genome with the same sites in indi-
Published by AAAS
viduals from 40 populations in Africa and
81 populations from Europe and Asia, the
team found that Mota was most closely re-
lated to the Ari, an ethnic group that still
lives nearby in the Ethiopian highlands.
They zeroed in on the DNA that the Ari
carry but Mota doesn’t, which was presum-
ably added during the past 4500 years. They
found that Mota lacks about 4% to 7% of
the DNA found in the Ari and all other Afri-
cans examined. This new DNA most closely
matches that of modern Sardinians and a
prehistoric farmer who lived in Germany.
Hints of these early farmers’ DNA previ-
ously had turned up in some living Africans,
Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on October 8, 2015
but Mota helped researchers zero in on the
farmer’s genetic signature in Africa, and to
establish when it arrived.
Manica suggests that both the European
farmers and living Africans inherited this
DNA from the same source—a population
in the Middle East, perhaps Anatolia or
Mesopotamia. Some of these Middle East-
erners headed into Europe and Asia start-
ing 8000 years ago, and were the first farm-
ers of Europe (Science, 20 February, p. 814).
But other descendants of this population
migrated into Africa, likely after Mota lived.
This fits with traces of Middle Eastern grains
found in Africa and dated to 3000 to 3500
years ago.
Because so many far-flung Africans still
carry the farmers’ DNA, the study suggests a
“huge” migration, Manica says. Farming had
already been established
in Africa by this time,
but the newcomers likely
had some advantage that
explains why their genes
spread. “It must have
Mota Cave been lots of people com-
ing in or maybe they had
new crops that were very
successful,” Manica says.
Population geneticist
David Reich of Harvard
University is struck by the
magnitude of the mixing
between Africans and Eurasians. He notes
that “a profound migration of farmers mov-
ing from Mesopotamia to North Africa has
long been speculated.” But, he says, “a west-
ern Eurasian migration into every popula-
tion they study in Africa—into the Mbuti
pygmies and the Khoisan? That’s surprising
and new.”
Migrations into and out of Africa were
likely complex and ongoing. “This study is
significant on its own,” Hodgson says. “But
hopefully it is only just the beginning of an-
cient African genomics.” ■
9 OCTOBER 2015 • VOL 350 ISSUE 6257 149