WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Our species appeared in Africa more than 300,000 years ago, with a migration out of the continent 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, heralding the start of the global spread of Homo sapiens. But where did these pioneers go after leaving Africa?
After years of debate, a new study offers an answer. These hunter-gatherer groups appear to have persisted for thousands of years as a homogeneous population in a geographic hub that spanned Iran, southeastern Iraq and northeastern Saudi Arabia before settling across Asia and Europe beginning about 45,000 years ago, the scientists said. . on Monday.
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Their findings were based on genomic datasets derived from ancient DNA and modern gene pools, combined with paleoecological evidence that indicated this region would represent an ideal habitat. Researchers have called this region, part of what is called the Persian Plateau, a “hub” for these people—who numbered perhaps only in the thousands—before they continued millennia later to more distant locations.
“Our results provide the first complete picture of where the ancestors of all present-day non-Africans are in the early phases of the colonization of Eurasia,” said molecular anthropologist Luca Pagani of the University of Padua in Italy, senior author of the study published in journal Nature Communications.
Anthropologist and study co-author Michael Petraglia, director of the Australian Research Center for Human Evolution at Griffith University, said the study “is a story about us and our story – our aim was to unravel some of the mystery about evolution us and our world. dispersion.”
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“The combination of genetic and paleoecological models allowed us to predict the location where early human populations first inhabited once they left Africa,” Petraglia added.
These people lived in small, mobile groups of hunter-gatherers, the researchers said. The site of the hub offered a variety of ecological contexts, from forests to grasslands and savannahs, which fluctuated over time between arid and humid intervals.
There would have been plenty of resources available, with evidence showing hunting of wild gazelle, sheep and goat, Petraglia said.
“Their diet would have consisted of edible plants and small to large game. Hunter-gatherer groups seemed to have practiced a seasonal lifestyle, living in the lowlands during the colder months and the highlands during the warmer months.” Petraglia said.
The people who inhabited the center at the time apparently had dark skin and dark hair, perhaps resembling the Gumuz or Anuak people who now live in parts of East Africa, Pagani said.
“Cave art appeared at the same time as people left the hub. So these cultural achievements may have been prepared while they were at the hub,” Pagani said.
Their eventual dispersal in different directions beyond the hub set the stage for the genetic divergence between present-day East Asians and Europeans, the researchers said.
The study used modern and ancient genomic data for Europeans and Asians.
“We found particularly useful the oldest genomes, dating from 45,000 to 35,000 years ago,” said molecular anthropologist and lead study author Leonardo Vallini of the University of Padua and the University of Mainz in Germany.
The researchers devised a way to untangle the extensive genetic mixing of populations that has occurred since dispersal outside the hub in order to pinpoint this region.
There were earlier small-scale forays of Homo sapiens out of Africa before the pivotal migration 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, but these appear to have been dead ends.
Homo sapiens was not the first human species to live outside of Africa – including the area surrounding the hub. Ancient interbreeding by our species has left a small Neanderthal contribution to the DNA of modern non-Africans.
“Neanderthals are attested in the area before the arrival of Homo sapiens, so the center may well have been where this interaction took place,” Vallini said.
(Reporting by Will Dunham Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
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