However, of the hundreds of thousands of human genomes sequenced since the Human Genome Project was launched in 1990, very few are from Indigenous Australians.

One of the new studies, which was led by the National Centre for Indigenous Genomics, has taken a step towards addressing that bias by sequencing the genomes of 159 individuals from geographically separate, remote Indigenous communities in four locations: the Tiwi Islands and Elcho Island, off the coast of the Northern Territory; Yarrabah in Queensland; and Titjikala in the central desert region.

These were compared with a reference panel of individuals from Australia, Papua New Guinea, Eurasia and Africa.

This analysis suggested that, as a whole, Indigenous Australians have almost as much genetic variation as Africa, but in some communities, particularly those on the Tiwi Islands, there is a relatively low rate of genetic variation.

The level of variation between Indigenous Australians and individuals from PNG differed between communities, and suggested that the two populations diverged around 47,000 years ago.

The second study analysed the genomes of 121 Indigenous Australians and revealed that around 12% of the variants are unique to Indigenous Australians.

“People have been living in Australia for at least 50,000 years, largely separate from the rest of the world, so it’s really no surprise that they're very genetically distinct,” said Ira Deveson, a researcher at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney

It's that easy - mutual respect
(Origin unknown. With thanks to Ian McLean)

But the biggest surprise was the high degree of genetic diversity between Indigenous communities.

The majority of Indigenous-specific genomic variants were found in only one community, rather than in all four.

“We know that there is diversity in cultural diversity and traditions, and now we can show demonstratively that there is diversity in genomics as well,” said Hardip Patel, a co-author of the papers.

The high degree of genomic variation between communities suggests that researchers need to do much more work to fully represent the genetic diversity of Australia’s Indigenous people.