The Khoisan, a people living in southern Africa, apparently has a gene pool that's remained untainted since prehistoric times compared to Westerners and also to neighboring Africans.

Researchers studied genetic samples from the Khoisan population (estimated at 100,000) and compared this to the DNA of 1,400 other races from around the world.

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The findings revealed the Khoisan genetics were most common among humans from the past 150,000 years. Recent migrations and interbreeding resulted in genetic diversity beginning just 20,000 years ago.

The Khoisan people, however, exhibited little intermixing of genes from other races. This group of hunter-gatherers remained intact since they were practically isolated from other races and cultures during most of their history.

Traditionally, Khoisan men only take wives from their group, making their genetic roots go deeper and very distinct from other African tribes and Asians and Europeans, too.

The Khoisan people are considered one of the oldest peoples in the world but external events are now beginning to endanger their way of life as hunter-gatherers, said researcher Stephen Schuster from Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.

The primary aim of this study is to determine how different ethnic groups spread around the globe and evolved over time. Studying the Khoisan people can help provide clues from their DNA that serves as a baseline for further comparison.

Khoisan DNA revealed their genetic information was so well preserved during human evolution, that their gene pool exhibits the earliest among modern humans from the prehistoric era before migrating and interbreeding with other races.

The research findings present a rare glimpse of how humans evolved over the last 150,000 years since Khoisan DNA can be considered as the mother gene pool from which all races hail from, according to lead author Hie Lim Kim from the Nanyang Technological University.

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