Our article on deep population structure in Africa is published in Nature

Posted by Ragsdale Lab on June 1, 2023

We are excited to share that our work on understanding ancient population structure within Africa is now published as an article in Nature! In this paper, we use geographically and genetically diverse populations across Africa and Eurasia to reconstruct detailed demographic models for our species in the deep past. We find that a model that includes long-lasting population structure, with populations connected by ongoing migration, provides the best fit to the genetic data. In contrast to other recent studies, we do not find evidence for a substantial contribution from an unidentified “ghost” population within Africa (akin to Neanderthal and Denisovan contributions in Eurasia). This work is in collaboration with my former postdoc advisor Simon Gravel, at McGill University, Brenna Henn and Tim Weaver at UC Davis, and others.