After emerging from Africa 100,000 years ago, humans migrated back to the continent earlier than previously thought.
A team led by Ryan Raaum at the City University of New York in the Bronx compared nuclear genome data from several populations living in the Horn of Africa with those of humans from across the Middle East and elsewhere. Groups such as Ethiopians and Somalians have non-African ancestry that is distinct from that of present-day people of the Middle East, indicating that interbreeding between African and Middle Eastern people occurred more than just a few thousand years ago, as other studies have suggested.
The authors conclude that humans were moving back to the Horn of Africa as early as 23,000 years ago, before the advent of agriculture.
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To and from the Horn of Africa. Nature 510, 447 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/510447d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/510447d
