White Neville, Kumar Manoharan, Lambert David
Department of Environment and Genetics, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia.
Am J Biol Anthropol. 2025 May;187(1):e70063. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.70063.
About 300 Aboriginal languages were spoken in Australia, classified into two groups: Pama-Nyungan (PN), comprised of one language Family, and Non-Pama-Nyungan (NPN) with more than 20 language Families. The Yolngu people belong to the larger PN Family and live in Arnhem Land in northern Australia. They are surrounded by groups who speak NPN languages. This study, using nuclear genomic and mitochondrial DNA data, was undertaken to shed light on the origins of the Yolngu people and their language. The nuclear genomic sequences of Yolngu people were compared to those of other Indigenous Australians, as well as Papuan, African, East Asian, and European people.
With the agreement of Indigenous participants, samples were collected from 13 Yolngu individuals and 4 people from neighboring NPN speakers, and their nuclear genomes were sequenced to a 30× coverage. Using the short-read DNA BGISEQ-500 technology, these sequences were mapped to a reference genome and identified ~24.86 million Single Nucleotide Variants (SNVs). The Yolngu SNVs were then compared to those of 36 individuals from 10 other Indigenous populations/locations across Australia and four worldwide populations using multidimensional scaling, population structure, F3 statistics, and phylogenetic analyses.
Using the above methods, we infer that Yolngu speakers are closely related to neighboring NPN speakers, followed by the Weipa population. No European or East Asian admixture was detected in the genomes of the Yolngu speakers studied here, which contrasts with the genomes of many other PN speakers that have been studied. Our results show that Yolngu speakers are more closely related to other PN speakers in the northeast of Australia than to those in central and Western Australia studied here. Yolngu and the other Australian populations from this study share Papuans as an out-group.
The study presented here provides an account of the nuclear and mitochondrial genomic diversity within the PN Yolngu Aboriginal population. The results show the Yolngu sample and their NPN neighbors have a strong genetic relationship. They also offer evidence of ancestral links between the Yolngu and PN-speaking populations in Cape York. From earlier fingerprint studies, consistent with the genomic results shown here, we consider a movement of people from the east into northeast Arnhem Land, associated with the flooding of the Sahul Shelf, estimated to have occurred between about 11 and 8 Kya ago. Several Yolngu myths point to such a movement. It is suggested that the spread of the PN language or its speakers may have influenced the population structure of the Yolngu. Further genomic studies, with larger samples, of populations to the east of the Yolngu around the Gulf of Carpentaria into Cape York are required to test this hypothesis. Our results imply that PN did not spread with the movement of people across the continent; rather, the PN languages diffused among the different populations. It seems clear that the languages dispersed and not the people. The low level of relatedness detected between the Yolngu people and the people of the central arid desert of Australia suggests a long period of separation with different patterns of migration. Beyond Australia, Yolngu are most closely related to the Papuan people of New Guinea.
澳大利亚曾使用约300种原住民语言，分为两组：帕马-纽因甘语系（PN），由一个语族组成；非帕马-纽因甘语系（NPN），有20多个语族。约鲁巴人属于较大的帕马-纽因甘语族，生活在澳大利亚北部的阿纳姆地。他们被说非帕马-纽因甘语系语言的群体所包围。本研究利用核基因组和线粒体DNA数据，旨在阐明约鲁巴人的起源及其语言。将约鲁巴人的核基因组序列与其他澳大利亚原住民、巴布亚人、非洲人、东亚人和欧洲人的序列进行比较。
在原住民参与者同意的情况下，从13名约鲁巴人个体和4名来自邻近说非帕马-纽因甘语系语言群体的人身上采集样本，并对其核基因组进行测序，覆盖度达到30倍。使用短读长DNA BGISEQ-500技术，将这些序列映射到参考基因组上，识别出约2486万个单核苷酸变异（SNV）。然后，使用多维尺度分析、群体结构分析、F3统计和系统发育分析，将约鲁巴人的SNV与来自澳大利亚其他10个原住民群体/地点的36个人以及四个全球群体的SNV进行比较。
使用上述方法，我们推断说约鲁巴语的人与邻近说非帕马-纽因甘语系语言的人关系密切，其次是韦帕群体。在本研究的约鲁巴语使用者的基因组中未检测到欧洲或东亚血统，这与许多其他已研究的帕马-纽因甘语使用者的基因组情况形成对比。我们的结果表明，说约鲁巴语的人与澳大利亚东北部的其他帕马-纽因甘语使用者的关系比与这里研究的澳大利亚中部和西部的使用者更为密切。本研究中的约鲁巴人和其他澳大利亚群体以外群的形式与巴布亚人有共同祖先。
本研究阐述了帕马-纽因甘语系约鲁巴原住民群体的核基因组和线粒体基因组多样性。结果表明，约鲁巴样本与其说非帕马-纽因甘语系语言的邻居有很强的遗传关系。它们还为约鲁巴人与约克角说帕马-纽因甘语系语言的群体之间的祖先联系提供了证据。从早期的指纹研究来看，与这里所示的基因组结果一致，我们认为大约在11至8千年前，随着萨胡尔陆架的洪水泛滥，人群从东部迁移到阿纳姆地东北部。一些约鲁巴人的神话也指向了这样的迁移。有人认为，帕马-纽因甘语系语言或其使用者的传播可能影响了约鲁巴人的群体结构。需要对约鲁巴人以东、卡奔塔利亚湾周围至约克角的人群进行更大样本的进一步基因组研究来验证这一假设。我们的结果表明，帕马-纽因甘语系并非随着人群在大陆上的迁移而传播；相反，帕马-纽因甘语系语言在不同群体中扩散。显然，是语言扩散了，而不是人群。约鲁巴人与澳大利亚中部干旱沙漠地区的人群之间检测到的亲缘关系较低，这表明他们经历了长期的分离，有着不同的迁移模式。在澳大利亚以外，约鲁巴人与新几内亚的巴布亚人关系最为密切。
