They find a skeleton in Indonesia and its DNA belongs to an unknown human group

A group of archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 7,200-year-old skeleton in a hunter-gatherer cave in Indonesia that has a “distinct human lineage.” never found anywhere in the world, according to a study published this week.

The relatively intact fossil, which belonged to a 17 or 18 year old, was buried in a fetal position in Panoramic Leange, a limestone cave in the south Sulawesi.

It was found among the artifacts of the toalean people, one of the first hunter-gatherer cultures in the region. The remains are the first known skeleton of a Toalean population.

The study, which was published in the journal Nature Wednesday, it was a collaboration between Indonesian and international researchers. Excavations began in 2015.

“This is the first time that someone has reported the discovery of ancient human DNA in the vast island region between mainland Asia and Australia,” he told AFP on Friday. Adam brumm, an archaeologist at the Australian Research Center for Human Evolution at Griffith University in Brisbane, who co-led the research.

The international study was carried out in close collaboration with various Indonesian researchers and institutions. It was led by the teacher Johannes krause, from the Max Planck Institutes for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and Human History Sciences in Jena, and Professor Cosimo Posth, from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and Brumm himself, from the Griffith University in Australia.

Brumm was referring to an area that stretches since Kalimantan and Lombok at the western end of Papuan, which scientists call Wallacea.

The researchers found that the excavation was particularly difficult because DNA can be easily degrade in a tropical climate.

“It is very rare to find ancient human DNA in the humid tropics, which is why it’s a great discovery“said Brumm.

DNA analysis revealed that the woman was part of a population group linked to Australian Indians and Papuans Nowadays.

However, the genome is also linked to a Divergent human lineage previously unknown that cannot be found anywhere else in the world.

The research challenges previous theories about the arrival times of different groups of humans in the region. “This shows how little we understand the history of mankind early in the Wallacea Islands in Indonesia, ”Brumm noted.