New Scientist
Image: Luca Pagani
Anatomically modern humans migrated out of Africa, but where and how? For years, researchers have argued about whether anatomically modern humans took the northern route through Egypt into Eurasia, or the southern route via the Arabian peninsula. Genomic analysis of hundreds of people from the area reveals that we took the high road – but that’s far from the end of the story.
“I think we’re only at the beginning of trying to understand the out-of-Africa migration,” says Michael Petraglia at the University of Oxford.
This event probably occurred between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. Luca Pagani of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, and his colleagues examined the genomes of 100 Egyptians and 125 Ethiopians to see whether traces of the early migration could still be seen in current occupants of those countries.
If the last stop out of Africa was Egypt, Eurasian genomes should have more in common with Egyptian than other African genomes. And if the last stop was Ethiopia, Eurasian genomes should be more like theirs. Read more on newscientist.com…
