Im südlichen Afrika lebte eine Gruppe von Menschen Hunderttausende von Jahren in teilweiser Isolation. Forscher fanden Veränderungen in Genen, die sowohl am Immunsystem als auch am Neuronenwachstum beteiligt sind und sich möglicherweise auf das Gehirnwachstum und komplexe kognitive Funktionen auswirken.

In southern Africa, a group of people lived in partial isolation for hundreds of thousands of years. This is shown in a new study based on analyses of the genomes of 28 people who lived between 10,200 and 150 years ago in southern Africa. The researchers also found genetic adaptations that likely shaped Homo sapiens as a species. The study, which is the largest to date of African ancient DNA, is published in Nature.

Homo sapiens has been around for at least 300,000 years. But exactly where on the African continent our species originated has not been known. According to some theories, Homo sapiens evolved in eastern Africa and only spread southwards around 50,000 years ago. A new study by researchers at Uppsala University and the University of Johannesburg shows that this assumption is wrong.

“We have long known that southern Africa was inhabited, but it was previously unclear whether these inhabitants were just predecessors of ours or whether they were Homo sapiens. We can now show that Homo sapiens have existed and evolved in southern Africa for a long time. This area has played an important role in human evolution, perhaps the most important of all,” says Mattias Jakobsson, who led the study and is a professor of genetics at Uppsala University.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09811-4