UJ and Uppsala University collaboration leads to extraordinary discovery
AUCKLAND PARK – The Stone Age child discovered in KwaZulu-Natal reveals humans emerged earlier than previously thought.
A research study based on DNA analysis of a Stone Age child who lived in KwaZulu-Natal discovered that humans existed earlier than previously thought and likely in more than one African region.
Researchers from the University of Johannesburg and Uppsala University in Sweden collaborated in researching the discovery, which was featured in the International Journal of Science and Research.
South Africa is known for its hominin fossil record which have been discovered in different parts of the country. This time 2000-year-old remains of a child found in Ballito Bay in KwaZulu-Natal during the 60s helped rewrite human history.
University of Johannesburg professor of stone age archaeology, Marlize Lombard initiated the collaboration with geneticists from Uppsala University in Sweden and the University of the Witwatersrand, who put together a team of experts at the Uppsala laboratory.
The researchers reconstructed the full genetic material of the Ballito Bay child and six other individuals from KwaZulu-Natal who lived between 2 300 and 300 years ago. Three Stone Age individuals who lived between 2 300 and 1 800 years ago were found to be genetically related to the descendants of the Khoi San groups.
The remains of four other individuals who lived 300 to 500 years ago during the Iron Age were genetically related to South Africans of West African descent.
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