There鈥檚 a reason why Sherpas have excelled at carrying western explorers up the forbidding peaks of Everest for more than a century, and it has to do with genetics. 聽 聽聽
A new study 鈥攌nown for their strength at high altitude鈥攊nherited genes from two ancestral pools. One group of ancestors migrated early to high altitudes and started adapting to the thin air about 30,000 years ago.
These genetically adapted super humans then started having babies with another group of (relative) newcomers to the high country. Their love child? Tibetans, who tend to thrive at elevations above 13,000 feet.
“This is a new tool we can use to identify advantageous alleles [alternative form of a gene] in Tibetans and other populations in the world that experienced this type of admixture and selection,”聽says , professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago and corresponding author of the study.