The dispersal of anatomically modern Homo sapiens out of Africa and across Eurasia provides a unique opportunity to examine the impacts of genetic selection as our species adapted to multiple new environments.
An analysis of ancient (1,000 to 45,000 years old) Eurasian genomic datasets reveals signatures of strong selection, including at least 57 hard sweeps after the initial human movement out of Africa, which have been obscured in modern populations by extensive admixture during the Holocene. In new research, scientists identified a previously unsuspected extended period of genetic adaptation lasting around 30,000 years, potentially in the Arabian Peninsula area, prior to a major Neanderthal genetic introgression and subsequent rapid dispersal across Eurasia as far as Australia. "Ancient human genomes make it possible to recover key events in the evolution of our species that are essentially hidden from modern human genomes," said Dr. Raymond Tobler, a researcher at the Australian National University. "We suspect the 'Arabian Standstill' period was a pivotal point in our evolutionary history, during which the ancestors of all non-African humans underwent…