When our ancestors left Africa, where did they go and when did it happen?

When our ancestors left Africa, where did they go and when did it happen? They clearly went in different directions and perhaps at different times, so this is a complicated question, but we can definitely take a crack at it. In this lesson, we investigate when did Homo sapiens leave Africa and head east towards Asia. We also investigate the path they took. Did they go along coastal routes, or along inland rivers, or both? WHERE DID OUR species come from, and how did we get from there to everywhere? Genetic studies have supplied a convincing answer to the first question: Our modern human ancestors evolved in Africa, then swept across Eurasia beginning some 60,000 to 50,000 years ago. Now, a pair of American archaeologists claim to have uncovered the route those early Homo sapiens took on their way to populating the planet. By following the broken trail of stone tools that modern humans left behind like bread crumbs marking their path, researchers propose that our ancestors took a circuitous path through Arabia, pausing there for some 50,000 years when it was a green oasis. Then they journeyed on to the Middle East, where they first encountered Neanderthals. Stylistic and manufacturing similarities, the archaeologists say, connect the dots between tools made first in the Nile Valley of Egypt, then in the Arabian Peninsula, and, finally, in Israel. Those tools became progressively smaller and more sophisticated, similar to the evolution of mobile phones today. “Archaeologists have always focused so much on ’out of Africa and into the Middle East’ that we’ve missed an entire chapter of the human expansion in Arabia,“ says archaeologist Jeffrey Rose of the Ronin Institute, based in New Jersey, co-author of a new report published this month in Quartär. Our species’ birthplace was in Africa about 200,000 years ago, according to fossils from sites such as Omo and Herto Bouri in Ethiopia. While these fossils look modern, however, the populations they represent didn’t begin to act fully modern until later. A tool kit known as the Emiran, dated to almost 50,000 years ago, defines the transition between archaic and modern human behavior—at least as far as tool-making goes. But since the discovery of the first Emiran tools—points, blades, and scrapers found in a cave near the Sea of Galilee in Israel in 1951—archaeologists have puzzled over where this more advanced way of making tools began. “The Emiran is the bridge technology,“ says Rose, who is also a National Geographic Emerging Explorer. “But where did these guys come from?“ Out of ... Arabia? Working with his former thesis adviser, archaeologist Anthony Marks of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Rose studied all of the stone tools he could get his hands on in Arabia, northeastern Africa, and the Middle East. In their new report, the pair says the evolution of stone tools in the region began in the Nile Valley of Egypt 150,000 to 130,000 years ago. Neanderthal Connection But in a surprising twist, the researchers also propose that the modern humans who made the Emiran were influenced by archaic people, possibly Neanderthals, who left behind fossils in Israel some 70,000 to 50,000 years ago, as well as more primitive tools, called Mousterian. The scientists say the Emiran tools are made in the same systematic manner as Egyptian Nubian tools, but closely resemble the local Mousterian tools. The timing fits with genetic studies that suggest that modern humans interbred with Neanderthals when they arrived in the Middle East. A 55,000-year-old modern human skull from Manot Cave in Israel, reported last month, has provided new evidence that the moderns were there at the same time as Neanderthals. Not everyone agrees that the Emiran hunter-gatherers’ tool-making was influenced by their Neanderthal neighbors. The Emiran “has nothing to do with Neanderthals,“ says Harvard University archaeologist Ofer Bar- Yosef, who proposed a decade ago that the Emiran was made by Egyptian Nubians when they moved directly to the Middle East. Regardless of who influenced the Emiran toolmakers, the long and winding path that led to modern tools may have taken a lengthy detour through Arabia. Questions: What percent of the current world population lives within 10 miles of a river? A) 55% B) 42% C) 17% D) 90% What adaptations allowed humans to migrate from Africa and into Asia? A) Humans built boats so they were able to travel along the coasts. B) Humans adapted to coastal environments to find food. C) Humans used Neaderthals trade routes to migrate into Asia from Africa. D) Humans did what they did in Africa and followed river “highways.” #NikolaysGeneticsLessosns #evolution #HumanEvolution #populationGenetics #Australopithecus #HomoErectus #neanderthal #homoSapiens #Humans #history #humanEvolutionTimeline #humanEvolutionStages #human #futureHumanEvolution #NaturalSelection #biology #howWillHumansEvolve #science #whatIf #whatHappensIf #evolutionTimeline #s