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New Study Shows Modern Humans Originated in Africa Over 300,000 Years Ago

01:08 PM

Monday, May 22, 2023

A recent American study, whose results were published in the scientific journal Nature, after examining the oldest known human remains in Morocco, said that the modern human race (Homo sapiens) originated in Africa more than 300,000 years ago.

She added that several groups of human ancestors from across Africa contributed to the emergence of modern humans, as they migrated from one region to another, mixing with each other over hundreds of thousands of years.

The research concluded that all humans today can trace their roots back to two population groups that lived in Africa about a million years ago.

“All humans share a relatively recent ancestry, but the issue in the distant past is more complex than our species evolving in one location only or separately,” said Aaron Ragsdale, a population geneticist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the lead author of the study.

He added, “It is likely that the ancestral groups spread over a (wide) geographical area and their demographics were weak, which means that there were permanent or at least frequent migrations between groups, which preserved the genetic similarity of our ancestors.”

Because the remains of our ancestors are so scarce, researchers have turned to collecting genome data from living people to find clues about the past. They examined genetic data from 290 people, most of them from 4 African peoples who varied geographically and genetically, to track similarities and differences between groups and discover genetic connections over hundreds of thousands of years.

The people in the study included 85 people from the West African Mende group from Sierra Leone, 44 from the Nama Khoe-San group from the south of the continent, 46 from the Ethiopian Amhara and Oromo groups, and 23 from the Gumuz group from Ethiopia as well.

The researchers also examined genetic data from 91 Europeans to determine the impact that occurred in the post-colonial era, and from Neanderthals, an extinct human species concentrated in Europe until about 40,000 years ago.

The researchers said that the record of the remains is sparse in the time period that would carry more information about the emergence and spread of modern humans (Homo sapiens), and there is no ancient DNA from the remains of a skeleton or teeth from these time periods.

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2023-05-22 10:08:00

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