Theos-Talk Archives (February 2002 Message tt00862)

Everyone outside of Africa — Asians, Europeans, Native Americans, 
Southeast Asians, Australian Aborigines, etc. — came from the
same small band of humans that left the mother continent some 80,000 
years ago by way of Ethiopia, according to a new theory unveiled 
Monday by geneticists and DNA detectives. 

"No, we haven't found the bones of the original Eve," said DNA
tracker Stephen Oppenheimer of Oxford University in a press 
teleconference.Instead, researchers have followed the trail of 
mitochondrial DNA, which we inherit unchanged from our mothers, and 
backtracked down the branching tree of the human family throughout 
the world. 
If the mitochondrial DNA story is correct, than we all descend from a 
woman who lived in Africa 150,000 years ago, said geneticist Martin 
Richards of Huddersfield University in England, who also took part in
the briefing. 

Oppenheimer and Huddersfield will appear in "The Real Eve," a 
Discovery Channel documentary premiering on April 21. 

What's more, all non-Africans come from a small group of people who 
ventured out of Africa some 80,000 years ago, perhaps because of 
climate changes along the Red Sea shore that made life there too 
difficult, he said. 

Genetic evidence of that small band can be found today in India, said 
Oppenheimer. "In India, all of the early lines that gave rise to
Asians and Europeans are found in great profusion and great antiquity," 
he said. 

For years anthropologists have debated whether humans left Africa by
a northern route — via the present-day Suez Canal region — or
by a southern route, via a short-lived isthmus connecting Ethiopia to
Yemen at the southern end of the Red Sea. Some researchers have 
even suggested that Europeans descend from the people of the northern 
exodus and the rest of non-Africans from the people of the southern 
exodus. 

But the DNA just doesn't support dual routes, said Oppenheimer and 
Richards. 

"The fact that we look different is because we live in different 
environments," said Oppenheimer. "(But) we are really, truly the same 
under the skin." 

The single exodus theory also jives well with other genetic and 
archeological discoveries. Last year, researchers working on the
Human Genome Project reported that the pool of human genetic 
material is startlingly small, implying we are a young species and come 
from avery small group of Africans. 

However, not everyone is convinced of the single group theory, said 
paleontologist Tim White of the University of California at Berkeley.
"My sense in it is that we're not close to the bottom line yet," he told 
Discovery News. 

Genetics has yielded some new data to the mix, he said, but the smoke 
hasn't yet cleared enough to see the details of exactly when and
where modern humans came out of Africa.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20020225/eve.htm