New research reveals genetic “purity” of Khoisan community

• published: 07 Dec 2014
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The Khoisan people, currently living in regions of southern Africa, have genetics that have remained “pure” and distinct not just from Europeans but from other Africans. Researchers took genetic samples from the Khoisan population, a group that numbers around 100,000 people, and compared the DNA information to more than 1,400 other people around the globe. The research results are suggestive that Khoisan genetics may have been one of the most common among humans over the past 150,000 years, with only recent migrations and interbreeding from the last twenty thousand years or so resulting in the genetic diversity that is common today. The Khoisans as a people exhibited very little incorporation of new genetic information. The large culture of hunter-gatherers faced physical isolation from other humans for the majority of its history; moreover Khoisan men would almost exclusively take wives from within the group, reinforcing these genetics even further – and raising the suggestion that the population has remained genetically distinct from other African tribes, Asians, and Europeans as well. The Khoisan consider themselves some of the oldest people, according to researcher Stephan Schuster, formerly of Penn State and currently at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. The study’s co-author, Schuster said that only now have recent events begun do endanger and encroach on the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the Khoisan. The genetic research into the Khoisan is important because of the possibility that it could help determine how and when other ethnicities of humans spread and developed over time, especially if researchers can establish Khoisan DNA as a baseline for comparison. With such a high level of genetic distinction that has been preserved from the prehistoric era, researchers say that Khoisan DNA could be close to the DNA exhibited by the earliest modern humans before spreading out across the globe. Hie Lim Kim, the primary author of the study that also now works with Nanyang Technological University as well said that it was a fascinating experience to get a glimpse at how humankind evolved over the last 150,000 years based on how human genetics have changed in relation to Khoisan DNA.