Out of Africa: How Ancient Humans Migrated into Europe

When did human first migrate out of Africa, and where did they go? Scientists have long wondered about the human route out of Africa and now, new genomic analyses may tell them exactly where ancient populations tread.

In order to uncover the migratory path that our ancestors took when travelling out of Africa around 60,000 years ago, the researchers analyzed he genetic information from six modern Northeast African populations, including 100 Egyptians and five Ethiopian populations represented by 25 people.

"Two geographically plausible routes have been proposed: an exit through the current Egypt and Sinai, which is the northern route, or one through Ethiopia, the Bab el Mandeb strait, and the Arabian Peninsula, which is the southern route," said Luca Pagani, one of the researchers, in a news release. "In our research, we generated the first comprehensive set of unbiased genomic data from Northeast African and observed, after controlling for recent migrations, a higher genetic similarity between Egyptians and Eurasians than between Ethiopians and Eurasians."

So what does this mean? It's likely that Egypt was the last stop on the way out of Africa, which means the northern route was far more likely than the southern route. These findings reveal a bit more about ancient human populations. However, this isn't the only use for researchers. The findings represent an extensive public catalog of genomic diversity in Ethiopian and Egyptian populations.

"This information will be of great value as a freely available reference panel for future medical and anthropological studies in these areas," said Pagani.

The findings are published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

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