First Modern Humans Made Their Way Out of Africa via Egypt, Not Ethiopia

First modern humans made their way out of Africa via a northern route and not a southern one, according to a new study.

"Two geographically plausible routes have been proposed: an exit through the current Egypt and Sinai, which is the northern route, or one through Ethiopia, the Bab el Mandeb strait, and the Arabian Peninsula, which is the southern route," said Dr. Luca Pagani, of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge in the UK. "In our research, we generated the first comprehensive set of unbiased genomic data from Northeast Africans and observed, after controlling for recent migrations, a higher genetic similarity between Egyptians and Eurasians than between Ethiopians and Eurasians."

Before coming to the conclusion, researchers analyzed the gene sequences from six northeast African populations, represented by 100 Egyptians and 125 Ethiopians. Researchers were aware of the fact that Middle East was the next route for the earliest humans, but the genetic information points at Egypt being their last destination in Africa before leaving for the Arabian Peninsula.

Apart from providing insights on the evolutionary past of all Eurasians with the new findings, researchers also have developed extensive public catalog of the genomic diversity in Ethiopian and Egyptian populations.

 "This information will be of great value as a freely available reference panel for future medical and anthropological studies in these areas," Dr. Pagani added.

The study was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.