Early Modern Humans (300,000 to 20,000 Years Ago) | Middle East And North Africa

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EARLY MODERN HUMANS (CRO-MAGNON MAN)

Cro-Magnon skull
Prehistoric modern humans — previously known as Cro-Magnon men and scientifically labeled anatomical modern human — were essentially modern Homo sapiens. They would be unrecognizable if you saw them on the street today if they wore the same clothes as everybody else. Ancient modern humans created paintings and sculptures, wore jewelry, made musical instruments and used dozens of different kinds of implements including tools to make tools. Cro-Magnon men were named after a French rock shelter where their fossils were first discovered in 1868. Homo sapien means "wise man." [Source: Rick Gore, National Geographic, September 1997; Rick Gore, National Geographic, July 2000, John Pfieffer, Smithsonian magazine, October 1986]

Geologic Age 300,000 to 10,000 years ago. 300,000-year-old fossils found in Morocco. A modern human skull, dated to 160,000 years ago, found in Ethiopia in 1997. Footprints made 117,000 year ago 60 miles north of Capetown, South Africa appear to have been made by modern humans. A 100,000-year-old skull specimen found in a cave in Qafzeh Israel was dated using thermolumiscene and ESR.

Size : males: 1.75 meters (5 feet 9 inches), 65 kilograms (143 pounds); females: 1.6 meters (5 feet 3 inches), 54 kilograms (119 pounds). Brain Size and Body Features: the same as people today; Skull Features: slightly bigger teeth and slightly thicker skulls than people today.

Early Modern humans were taller and narrower than Neanderthals and a had a less voluminous rib cage. Neanderthals could be as much as 15 centimeters (half a foot) shorter than modern humans. They were squatter with stubbier extremities, likely because they evolved in a colder part of the world compared to early humans, who did most of their evolution in Africa. Modern human brain cases were "higher and rounder" than those of Neanderthals. Early human brows were also much less pronounced, if not non-existent, compared to Neanderthals. CT scans reveal that human ear bones are shaped differently compared to Neanderthals. [Source: Sara Novak, Discover Magazine, April 9, 2024]

We don't really use the term Cro-Magnon anymore. The term Cro-Magnon was used earlier on because the first fossils identified as such were some of the very first specimens of ancient humans and early scientists considered them significantly different than us today. But now, by comparison, they aren't really that different. [Source: Sara Novak, Discover Magazine, April 9, 2024]

Websites and Resources on Hominins and Human Origins: Smithsonian Human Origins Program humanorigins.si.edu ; Institute of Human Origins iho.asu.edu ; Becoming Human University of Arizona site becominghuman.org ; Hall of Human Origins American Museum of Natural History amnh.org/exhibitions ; The Bradshaw Foundation bradshawfoundation.com ; Britannica Human Evolution britannica.com ; Human Evolution handprint.com ; University of California Museum of Anthropology ucmp.berkeley.edu; John Hawks' Anthropology Weblog johnhawks.net/ ; New Scientist: Human Evolution newscientist.com/article-topic/human-evolution

Early Modern Human Milestones

20120205-Cro Magnon bone.jpg
Cro-Magnon bones
400,000 years ago: when modern human is believed to have developed.

300,000 years ago: earliest evidence of modern humans, in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco.

195,000 years ago: earliest evidence of modern humans in East Africa, from Omo Ethiopia. 160,000 years ago, oldest modern human skull, found in Herto Ethiopia in 1997.

100,000 years ago: migration out Africa.

100,000 years ago: earliest evidence of burials.

60,000 years ago: earliest firm evidence of humans in Australia.

40,000 years ago: earliest firm evidence of humans in Europe.

30,000 years ago: earliest known cave paintings.

20,000 years ago: furthest extent of last ice age caused colder climate and abandonment of many northern sites.

13,000 years ago: earliest firm evidence of humans in the Americas.

10,000 years ago: most recent ice age ends.

Earliest Evidence of Modern Humans (in Africa and the Middle East)

Country — Date — Place — Notes
Morocco — 300,000 years before present —Jebel Irhoud —Anatomically modern human remains of eight individuals dated 300,000 years old, making them the oldest remains ever found.
Ethiopia — 195,000 years before present — Omo Kibish Formation — The Omo remains found in 1967 near the Ethiopian Kibish Mountains, have been dated as ca. 195,000 years old.

Jebel Irhoud skull

Palestine/Israel — 180,000 years before present — Misliya Cave, Mount Carmel — Fossil maxilla is apparently older than remains found at Skhyul and Qafzeh.
Sudan — 140,000–160,000 years before present — Singa — Anatomically modern human discovered 1924 with rare temporal bone pathology [Source: Wikipedia +]

United Arab Emirates — 125,000 years before present — Jebel Faya — Stone tools made by anatomically modern humans
South Africa — 125,000 years before present — Klasies River Caves — Remains found in the Klasies River Caves in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa show signs of human hunting. There is some debate as to whether these remains represent anatomically modern humans.
Libya — 50,000–180,000 years before present — Haua Fteah — Fragments of 2 mandibles discovered in 1953 +

Oman — 75,000–125,000 years before present — Aybut — Tools found in the Dhofar Governorate correspond with African objects from the so-called 'Nubian Complex', dating from 75-125,000 years ago. According to archaeologist Jeffrey I. Rose, human settlements spread east from Africa across the Arabian Peninsula.
Democratic Republic of the Congo — 90,000 years before present — Katanda, Upper Semliki River — Semliki harpoon heads carved from bone.
Egypt — 50,000–80,000 years before present — Taramasa Hill — Skeleton of 8- to 10-year-old child discovered in 1994 +

Earliest Evidence of Modern Humans in Asia and Oceania

Country — Date — Place — Notes
China — 80,000–120,000 years before present — Fuyan Cave — Teeth were found under rock over which 80,000 years old stalagmites had grown.
India — 70,000 years before present — Jwalapuram, Andhra Pradesh — Recent finds of stone tools in Jwalapuram before and after the Toba supereruption, may have been made by modern humans, but this is disputed.
Indonesia —63,000-73,000 years before present — Lida Ajer cave — Teeth found in Sumatra in the 19th century
Philippines —67,000 years before present — Callao Cave — Archaeologists, Dr. Armand Mijares with Dr. Phil Piper found bones in a cave near Peñablanca, Cagayan in 2010 have been dated as ca. 67,000 years old. It's the earliest human fossil ever found in Asia-Pacific [Source: Wikipedia +]

Australia — 65,000 years before present — Madjedbebe — The oldest human skeletal remains are the 40,000-year-old Lake Mungo remains in New South Wales, but human ornaments discovered at Devil's Lair in Western Australia have been dated to 48,000 years before present and artifacts at Madjedbebe in Northern Territory are dated to ca. 65,000 Years before present.
Taiwan — 50,000 years before present — Chihshan Rock Site — Chipped stone tool similar to those of the Changpin culture on the east coast.
Japan — 47,000 years before present — Lake Nojiri — Genetic research indicates arrival of humans in Japan by 37,000 Years before present. Archeological remains at the Tategahana Paleolithic Site at Lake Nojiri have been dated as early as 47,000 Years before present. +

Laos — 46,000 years before present — Tam Pa Ling Cave — In 2009 an ancient skull was recovered from a cave in the Annamite Mountains in northern Laos which is at least 46,000 years old, making it the oldest modern human fossil found to date in Southeast Asia
Borneo — 46,000 years before present — (see Malaysia)
East Timor — 42,000 years before present — Jerimalai cave — Fish bones
Tasmania — 41,000 years before present — Jordan River Levee — Optically stimulated luminescence results from the site suggest a date ca. 41,000 Years before present. Rising sea level left Tasmania isolated after 8000 Years before present.
Hong Kong — 39,000 years before present — Wong Tei Tung — Optically stimulated luminescence results from the site suggest a date ca. 39,000 Years before present.
Malaysia — 34,000–46,000 years before present — Niah Cave — A human skull in Sarawak, Borneo (Archaeologists have claimed a much earlier date for stone tools found in the Mansuli valley, near Lahad Datu in Sabah, but precise dating analysis has not yet been published.) +

Fuyan Cave teeth

New Guinea — 40,000 years before present — Indonesian Side of New Guinea — Archaeological evidence shows that 40,000 years ago, some of the first farmers came to New Guinea from the South-East Asian Peninsula.
Sri Lanka — 34,000 years before present — Fa Hien Cave — The earliest remains of anatomically modern humans, based on radiocarbon dating of charcoal, have been found in the Fa Hien Cave in western Sri Lanka.
Okinawa — 32,000 years before present — Yamashita-cho cave, Naha city — Bone artifacts and an ash seam dated to 32,000±1000 Years before present.
Tibetan Plateau — 30,000 years before present
Buka Island, New Guinea — 28,000 years before present — Kilu Cave — Flaked stone, bone, and shell artifacts +

Earliest Evidence of Modern Humans in Europe

Greece — 45,000 years before present — Mount Parnassus — Geneticist Bryan Sykes identifies 'Ursula' as the first of The Seven Daughters of Eve, and the carrier of the mitochondrial haplogroup U. This hypothetical woman moved between the mountain caves and the coast of Greece, and based on genetic research represent the first human settlement of Europe.
Italy — 43,000–45,000 years before present — Grotta del Cavallo, Apulia — Two baby teeth discovered in Apulia in 1964 are the earliest modern human remains yet found in Europe.
United Kingdom — 41,500–44,200 years before present — Kents Cavern — Human jaw fragment found in Torquay, Devon in 1927 [Source: Wikipedia +]

Germany — 42,000–43,000 years before present — Geißenklösterle, Baden-Württemberg — Three Paleolithic flutes belonging to the early Aurignacian, which is associated with the assumed earliest presence of Homo sapiens in Europe (Cro-Magnon). It is the oldest example of prehistoric music.
Lithuania — 41,000–43,000 years before present — Šnaukštai (lt) near Gargždai — A hammer made from reindeer horn similar to those used by the Bromme culture was found in 2016. The discovery pushed back the earliest evidence of human presence in Lithuania by 30,000 years, i.e. to before the last glacial period.
Romania — 37,800–42,000 years before present —Pe tera cu Oase — Bones dated as 38–42,000 years old are among the oldest human remains found in Europe. +

France — 32,000 years before present — Chauvet Cave — The cave paintings in the Chauvet Cave in southern France have been called the earliest known cave art, though the dating is uncertain.
Czech Republic — 31,000 years before present — Mladeč caves — Oldest human bones that clearly represent a human settlement in Europe.
Poland — 30,000 years before present — Obłazowa Cave — A boomerang made from mammoth tusk
Russia — 28,000-30,000 years before present — Sungir — Burial site
Portugal — 24,500 years before present — Abrigo do Lagar Velho — Possible Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon hybrid, the Lapedo child
Sicily — 20,000 years before present — San Teodoro cave — Human cranium dated by gamma-ray spectrometry +

Pedra Furada, Brazil

Earliest Evidence of Modern Humans in America

Brazil — 41,000–56,000 years before present — Pedra Furada — Charcoal from the oldest layers yielded dates of 41,000-56,000 BP.

Canada — 25,000–40,000 years before present — Bluefish Caves — Human-worked mammoth bone flakes found at Bluefish Caves, Yukon, are much older than the stone tools and animal remains at Haida Gwaii in British Columbia (10-12,000 BP) and indicate the earliest known human settlement in North America.

United States — 16,000 years before present — Meadowcroft Rockshelter — Stone, bone, and wood artifacts and animal and plant remains found in Washington County, Pennsylvania. (Earlier claims have been made, but not corroborated, for sites such as Topper, South Carolina.)

Chile — 18,500-14,800 years before present — Monte Verde — Carbon dating of remains from this site represent the oldest known settlement in South America.

Paleolithic Period

Paleolithic Period (about 3 million years to 10,000 B.C.) — also spelled Palaeolithic Period and also called Old Stone Age — is a cultural stage of human development, characterized by the use of chipped stone tools. The Paleolithic Period is divided into three period: 1) Lower Paleolithic Period (2,580,000 to 200,000 years ago); 2) Middle Paleolithic Period (about 200,000 years ago to about 40,000 years ago); 3) Upper Paleolithic Period (beginning about 40,000 years ago). The three subdivisions are generally defined by the types of tools used — and their corresponding levels of sophistication — in each period. The period is studied through archaeology, the biological sciences, and even metaphysical studies including theology. Archaeology supplies sufficient information to provide some insight into the minds of Neanderthals and early Modern humans (i.e. Cro Magnon Man) who lived during this time.

Earliest modern humans in Africa

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica: “The onset of the Paleolithic Period has traditionally coincided with the first evidence of tool construction and use by Homo some 2.58 million years ago, near the beginning of the Pleistocene Epoch (2.58 million to 11,700 years ago). In 2015, however, researchers excavating a dry riverbed near Kenya’s Lake Turkana discovered primitive stone tools embedded in rocks dating to 3.3 million years ago—the middle of the Pliocene Epoch (some 5.3 million to 2.58 million years ago). Those tools predate the oldest confirmed specimens of Homo by almost 1 million years, which raises the possibility that toolmaking originated with Australopithecus or its contemporaries and that the timing of the onset of this cultural stage should be reevaluated. “Throughout the Paleolithic, humans were food gatherers, depending for their subsistence on hunting wild animals and birds, fishing, and collecting wild fruits, nuts, and berries. The artifactual record of this exceedingly long interval is very incomplete; it can be studied from such imperishable objects of now-extinct culture. [Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica ^]

“At sites dating from the Lower Paleolithic Period (2,580,000 to 200,000 years ago), simple pebble tools have been found in association with the remains of what may have been some of the earliest human ancestors. A somewhat more-sophisticated Lower Paleolithic tradition known as the Chopper chopping-tool industry is widely distributed in the Eastern Hemisphere and tradition is thought to have been the work of the hominin species named Homo erectus. It is believed that H. erectus probably made tools of wood and bone, although no such fossil tools have yet been found, as well as of stone.^

“About 700,000 years ago a new Lower Paleolithic tool, the hand ax, appeared. The earliest European hand axes are assigned to the Abbevillian industry, which developed in northern France in the valley of the Somme River; a later, more-refined hand-ax tradition is seen in the Acheulean industry, evidence of which has been found in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Some of the earliest known hand axes were found at Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania) in association with remains of H. erectus. Alongside the hand-ax tradition there developed a distinct and very different stone tool industry, based on flakes of stone: special tools were made from worked (carefully shaped) flakes of flint. In Europe the Clactonian industry is one example of a flake tradition. ^

“The early flake industries probably contributed to the development of the Middle Paleolithic flake tools of the Mousterian industry, which is associated with the remains of Neanderthals. Other items dating to the Middle Paleolithic are shell beads found in both North and South Africa. In Taforalt, Morocco, the beads were dated to approximately 82,000 years ago, and other, younger examples were encountered in Blombos Cave, Blombosfontein Nature Reserve, on the southern coast of South Africa. Experts determined that the patterns of wear seem to indicate that some of these shells were suspended, some were engraved, and examples from both sites were covered with red ochre. [Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica ^]

Spreading homo sapiens

Is Every Person Alive Today a Descendant of a Woman Who Lived in Botswana 200,000 Years Ago?

By some reckonings anatomically modern humans, or Homo sapiens just like us, emerged in Africa about 200,000 years ago but the precise location of where they originated was not known. That is until October 2019, when scientists suggested — in a study published in the journal Nature based on genetic data — that modern humans' like us first appeared in modern-day Botswana. This finding supports the Out of Africa theory that our modern human migration but many anthropologists were skeptical about the findings.[Source: Aylin Woodward, Business Insider, October 28, 2019]

According to to Business Insider: In the Nature study, scientists analyzed mitochondrial DNA — genetic information that gets passed down the female line — from more than 1,200 people across myriad populations in Africa. By examining which genes were preserved in people's DNA over time, the anthropologists determined that anatomically modern humans emerged in what was once a lush wetland in Botswana, south of the Zambezi River.

Anthropologist Vanessa Hayes, the senior author of the paper, said in a press conference that the findings suggest "everyone walking around today" can trace their mitochondrial DNA back to this "human homeland." To trace the geographic origin of our ancestors, Hayes and her colleagues examined mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from people currently living in southern Africa, such as the Khoisan. mtDNA, which is passed down the maternal line, is often used to trace human ancestry because it isn't mixed with paternal DNA. That means it changes less over time and leaves a clearer link to distant relatives. “When it comes to mtDNA, modern humans all share a group of genes called the L macro-haplogroup. This L-branch is split into two sub-groups: L1'6 and L0. The latter can be found in the peoples of southern Africa, and that's what Hayes's team analyzed. Eva Chan, a co-author of the study, said this was the "by far the largest L0 study to date."

What Botswana Was Like When Early Humans Lived There

The region this ancestor came from, called the Makgadikgadi–Okavango paleo-wetland, was near the modern Okavango Delta, an area filled with wetlands, lakes and lush vegeation during the rainy season. According to Business Insider: The team's analysis, which also included reconstructions of what the area's climate was like at the time, revealed that Homo sapiens sapiens lived in this homeland for about 70,000 years. Then, as the climate changed, our ancestors dispersed in two waves: First, a group spread northeast 130,000 years ago, then others left in a second migration to the southwest 110,000 years ago. [Source: Aylin Woodward, Business Insider, October 28, 2019]

“According to Hayes, these migrating groups likely followed herds of animals out of the region.

“This timeline runs counter to the one some scientists have created based on fossil evidence, however. The oldest-ever specimens of anatomically modern humans — skulls and other fossils dating back 195,000 years — were found in Ethiopia, which led many anthropologists to think of eastern Africa (rather than southern Africa, as the new study suggests) as the birthplace of our modern ancestors.

“The new genetic analysis also offers credence to the idea that all modern humans evolved in one place in Africa before migrating to current-day Europe, Asia, and Australia — what's known as the "Out of Africa" hypothesis — rather than evolving separately in multiple places around the world at the same time.

Flaws with Botswana Woman Theory

Anthropologist Ryan Rauum, who researches African population genetics at Lehman College, thinks the new study has a significant flaw. According to Rauum, the researchers didn't go back far back enough on the genetic timeline. “Although Hayes's research pinpointed where the L0 haplogroup originated, he said, the mitochondrial DNA of most people in the world can be traced back to the L1'6 subgroup of the L branch, not L0. So to find a "single origin" for our species, Rauum thinks, researchers should find a genetic predecessor who lived prior to when the genetic split between L0 and L1'6 occurred. "Where I get a little lost in the weeds is when they expand out to argue that these data indicate a southern-African origin for anatomically modern humans," he told Business Insider. "The data do not."

Rauum added that he doesn't like the phrase "ancestral homeland" in general, since modern humans likely had multiple homelands scattered around the African continent. "I increasingly think that there probably wasn't a single population in which modern humans evolved. If that is the case, there is no 'homeland,'" he said. The researchers said they'd need more DNA to make further conclusions

According to Business Insider: Another issue with Hayes' team's findings is that an mtDNA analysis only examines maternal DNA. Two parts of the cell carry DNA: the nucleus, where most of our genetic material resides, and the mitochondria. Nuclear DNA (nDNA) is inherited from both parents and is what passes along the Y chromosome; mitochondrial DNA, on the other hand, is only passed down from the mother. nDNA is rare in the fossil record, which is why studies like Hayes' often don't examine it. But that means such research can't examine the entire genome of our ancestral populations.

“In 2014, anthropologists pinpointed the oldest known modern human lineage based on Y chromosome data. This population was at most 160,000 years old, and located in central-western Africa. So every person alive today likely descended from a man who lived in a different part of the continent than the homeland Hayes and her colleagues suggest. Hayes noted that a full genome analysis could yield different results: "There could be other origins and other lineages — it's a possibility," she said during the press conference.

Modern Humans Origins More Complex Than the Botswana Woman Study Suggests

Isabelle Catherine Winder wrote: “The scientists behind the Botswana Woman research studied genetic data from many individuals from the KhoeSan peoples of southern Africa, who are thought to live where their ancestors have lived for hundreds of thousands of years. The researchers used their new data together with existing information about people all around the world (including other areas traditionally associated with the origins of humankind) to reconstruct in detail the branching of the human family tree.

“We can think of the earliest group of humans as the base of the tree with a specific set of genetic data - a gene pool. Each different sub-group that branched off and migrated away from humanity’s original “homeland” took a subset of the genes in that gene pool with them. But most people, and so the vast majority of those genes, remained behind. This means people alive today with different subsets of our species’ genes can be grouped on different branches of the human family tree.

“Groups of people with the most diverse genomes are likely to be the ones that descended directly from the original group at the base of the tree, rather than one of the small sub-groups that split from it. In this case, the researchers identified one of the groups of KhoeSan people from around northern Botswana as the very bottom of the trunk, using geographical and archaeological data to back up their conclusion.

If you compare this process to creating your own family tree, it makes sense to think you can use information about who lives where today and how everyone relates to each other to reconstruct where the family came from. For example, many of my relatives live on the lovely Channel Island of Alderney, and one branch of my family have indeed been islanders for many generations.

“Of course, there’s always some uncertainty created by variations in the data. But as long as you look for broad patterns rather than focusing on specific details, you will still get a reasonable impression. There are even some statistical techniques you can use to assess the strength of your interpretation. But there are several problems with taking the process of building a human family tree to such a detailed conclusion, as this new research does. First, it’s important to note that the study didn’t look at the whole genome. It focused just on mitochondrial DNA, a small part of our genetic material that (unlike the rest) is almost only ever passed from mothers to children. This means it isn’t mixed up with DNA from fathers and so is easier to track across the generations.

“As a result, mitochondrial DNA is commonly used to reconstruct evolutionary histories. But it only tells us part of the story. The new study doesn’t tell us the origin of the human genome but the place and time where our mitochondrial DNA appeared. As a string of just 16,569 genetic letters out of over 3.3 billion in each of our cells, mitochondrial DNA is a very tiny part of us.

The fact that mitochondrial DNA comes almost only ever from mothers also means the story of its inheritance is much simpler than the histories of other genes. This implies that every bit of our genetic material may have a different origin, and have followed a different path to get to us. If we did the same reconstruction using Y chromosomes (passed only from father to son) or whole genomes, we’d get a different answer to our question about where and when humans originated.

“There is actually a debate over whether the woman from whom all our mitochondrial DNA today descends (“mitochondrial Eve”) could ever have even met the man from whom all living men’s Y-chromosomes descend (“Y-chromosome Adam”). By some estimates, they may have lived as much as 100,000 years apart.

“And all of this ignores the possibility that other species or populations may also have contributed DNA to modern humans. After this mitochondrial “origin”, our species interbred with Neanderthals and a group called the Denisovans. There’s even evidence that these two interbred with one another, at about the same time as they were hybridising with us. Earlier modern humans probably also interbred with other human species living alongside them in other time periods.

“All of this, of course, suggests that modern human history — like the history of modern primates — was much more than a simple tree with straight lines of inheritance. It’s much more likely that our distant ancestors interbred with other species and populations to form a braiding stream of gene pools than that we form a nice neat tree that can be reconstructed genetically. And if that’s true, we may not even have a single origin we can hope to reconstruct.

Did Humankind Begin at 19.4N, 33.7E, in Sudan?

Using another approach — applied computer modelling to thousands of ancient and modern genomes to create a vast family tree showing how individuals across the world are related to each other, and from where they originated — Oxford University scientists determined humankind originated at 19.4N, 33.7E — an area of desert, about 250 miles north of Khartoum in Sudan. The research was published in 2022 in the journal Science. [Source: Sarah Knapton, The Telegraph, February 25, 2022]

“The very earliest ancestors we identify do indeed trace back in time to a geographic location that is in modern Sudan,” said Dr Anthony Wilder Wohns, the study’s lead author, who undertook the research as part of his PhD in Oxford and is now at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University. “These ancestors lived up to and over one million years ago — which is much older than current estimates for the age of modern humans — so bits of our genome have been inherited from individuals that we wouldn’t recognise as modern humans, but who most likely lived in north-east Africa. Essentially, we are reconstructing the genomes of our ancestors and using them to form a vast network of relationships. We can then estimate when and where these ancestors lived.”

Sarah Knapton wrote in The Telegraph: “Researchers said there is some uncertainty about the exact location because of sampling bias, which means that certain areas are not represented. However, they said the findings are compatible with early modern human fossils from eastern and northern Africa. “At any point in the past we would have had very large numbers of genetic ancestors,” added Dr Yan Wong, an evolutionary geneticist at Oxford’s Big Data Institute. “The ones that our method locates at the oldest times happen to primarily live in NE Africa, but there are likely to have been others scattered over that continent, which our approach is not powerful enough to pinpoint.”

“To create the family tree, researchers took 6,500 modern and ancient genomes from more than 215 different human populations and used computer power to work out how they were linked, and the timing of genetic changes. The algorithms predicted where common ancestors must have been present in evolutionary trees, eventually leading to a network which contained almost 27 million predecessors. After adding location data on these sample genomes, the authors were able to estimate where the ancestors had lived. The results successfully recaptured key events in human evolutionary history, including the migration out of Africa and when the Americas were first inhabited. However, the team hopes that when more genomes are added, it will start to show ancient human movements which have been lost in time.

Dr Wong said: “We have basically built a huge family tree, a genealogy for all of humanity that models as exactly as we can the history that generated all the genetic variation we find in humans today.This genealogy allows us to see how every person’s genetic sequence relates to every other. This study is laying the groundwork for the next generation of DNA sequencing. As the quality of genome sequences from modern and ancient DNA samples improves, the trees will become even more accurate and we will eventually be able to generate a single, unified map that explains the descent of all the human genetic variation we see today.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons except Earliest modern humans in Africa from Science magazine

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2024