9,000 Years Of Human History Revealed By DNA Discovery

Victoria Gibbon and Joscha Gretzinger, who co-lead the study, extracted DNA from the remains, which ranged in age from 10,000 years ago to 1,600 years ago by making a powder from bone fragments.

This new method of extraction was successful, yielding a surprising result, and added a new layer of detail to our human history of migration and interaction. The genetic map that researchers were able to create showed that the Indigenous San and Khoekhoe peoples shared a strikingly similar genetic profile and that they diverged from the rest of the global population around the same time.