Article: DNA Study Yields Clues on First Migration of Early Humans

DNA Study Yields Clues on First Migration of Early Humans

By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: May 13, 2005

By studying the DNA of an ancient people in Malaysia, a team of geneticists
says it has illuminated many aspects of how modern humans migrated from
Africa.

The geneticists say there was only one migration of modern humans out of
Africa; that it took a southern route to India, Southeast Asia and
Australia; and that it consisted of a single band of hunter-gatherers,
probably just a few hundred people strong.

Because these events occurred in the last Ice Age, when Europe was at first
too cold for human habitation, the researchers say, it was populated only
later, not directly from Africa but as an offshoot of the southern
migration. The people of this offshoot would presumably have trekked back
through the lands that are now India and Iran to reach the Near East and
Europe.

The findings depend on analysis of mitochondrial DNA, a type of genetic
material inherited solely through the female line. They are reported today
in Science by a team of geneticists led by Dr. Vincent Macaulay of the
University of Glasgow.

Everyone in the world can be placed on a single family tree, in terms of
their mitochondrial DNA, because everyone has inherited that piece of DNA
from a single woman, the mitochondrial Eve, who lived some 200,000 years
ago.

There were, of course, many other women in that ancient population. But over
the generations, one mitochondrial DNA replaced all the others through the
process known as genetic drift.

With the help of mutations that have built up on the one surviving copy,
geneticists can arrange people in lineages and estimate the time of origin
of each lineage.

With this approach, Dr. Macaulay's team calculates that the emigration from
Africa occurred 65,000 years ago, pushed along the coasts of India and
Southeast Asia and reached Australia by 50,000 years ago, the date of the
earliest known archaeological site there.

Full Text at The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/13/science/13migrate.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=11
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