Arabia the First Stop for Modern Humans Out of Africa, Suggests New Study

Genetic study strengthens theory that modern humans found their first home in Arabia before venturing beyond.
Questions surrounding when and where early modern humans first migrated from Africa to populate the rest of the world have long been a focus of debate and study among scientists, where genetic research has played a key role. Now, recent genetic research study results have been released by an international team of scientists. The research, published January 26 by Cell Press in the American Journal of Human Genetics, suggests that modern humans settled first in Arabia more than 60,000 years ago on their way out through the Horn of Africa.

Says senior study author Dr. Luisa Pereira of the University of Porto in Portugal (IPATIMUP): "A major unanswered question regarding the dispersal of modern humans around the world concerns the geographical site of the first steps out of Africa. One popular model predicts that the early stages of the dispersal took place across the Red Sea to southern Arabia, but direct genetic evidence has been thin on the ground."

Led by Pereira and Professor Martin Richards at the University of Leeds in the UK, in collaboration with colleagues from across Europe, Arabia, and North Africa, the researchers investigated this question by conducting a study of three of the earliest non-African maternal lineages associated with the time period when modern humans first migrated out of Africa. They compared data taken from mitochondrial DNA genomes from Arabia and the Near East with that of hundreds of other samples from Europe. Mitochondrial DNA, which traces the line of female descent in populations, has been extensively used by scientists to determine how different populations are related, thus revealing clues about human migratory patterns.

"Taken together, our results suggests that Arabia was indeed the first staging-post in the spread of modern humans around the world," concludes Richards, study co-author and currently Professor of Archaeogenetics at the University of Huddersfield.

Details of the study are published in Fernandes et al., The Arabian Cradle: Mitochondrial Relicts of the First Steps along the Southern Route out of Africa, The American Journal of Human Genetics (2012), doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2011.12.010.

The research was funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, the Leverhulme Trust, and the DeLaszlo Foundation.
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/december-2011/article/arabia-the-first-stop-for-modern-humans-out-of-africa-suggests-new-study