The oldest human genomes yet reconstructed in South Africa have come from two people who lived about 10,000 years ago, according to researchers working on material from a rock shelter near George on the country’s southern coast.
The work, described by the University of Cape Town and reported by DW, places the genomes far earlier than the roughly 2,000-year-old sequences that previously held the regional record. The study focused on remains from the Oakhurst rock shelter and ultimately produced 13 reconstructed genomes spanning a wide time range between about 1,300 and 10,000 years ago.
The older genomes came from one man and one woman. Victoria Gibbon, a professor of biological anthropology at UCT, said the remains were recovered near George, about 370 kilometres east of Cape Town. The study’s lead author, Joscha Gretzinger, said the results pointed to a long period of relative genetic stability in southernmost Africa, in contrast with parts of Europe where large-scale genetic change was driven by population movement over the last 10,000 years.
The discovery also adds weight to a broader pattern seen in southern Africa. UCT said the oldest genomes were genetically similar to the San and Khoekhoe groups living in the same region today. That continuity appears to have changed only about 1,200 years ago, when newcomers arrived and introduced pastoralism, agriculture and new languages, then began interacting with local hunter-gatherer communities.
The finding matters because ancient DNA from southern Africa is often difficult to recover. UCT said much of the region’s earliest evidence of modern humans is poorly preserved, but newer sequencing technology is beginning to make that material usable. In practical terms, that means researchers can compare much older populations with present-day groups and ask whether cultural and biological change moved together or followed different timelines.
The study does not settle every question about population history in the region, but it does widen the evidence base. The genomes are old enough to push the regional record back by thousands of years, while also showing that the people who lived at Oakhurst were not isolated from the ancestry of communities still present in the Western Cape today.
For archaeologists and geneticists, that combination is notable. It suggests that southern Africa may preserve a rarer form of deep continuity than many other parts of the world, where later migrations and replacement events leave a more broken genetic record. The new genomes therefore function both as a technical achievement and as a historical clue.
UCT said the study demonstrates what can be recovered when preserved material is paired with newer DNA methods. That may encourage additional work on other fragmentary remains across the region, especially in sites where archaeology already points to long human occupation but genetics has remained thin.
