Stone Age tools uncovered in Yemen point to humans leaving Africa and inhabiting Arabia perhaps as far back as 63,000 years ago, archaeologists report. "The expansion of modern humans out of Africa and into Eurasia via the Arabian Peninsula is currently one of the most debated questions in prehistory," begins a report led by Anne Delagnes of France's Université Bordeaux. The archaeologists report from the site of Shi'bat Dihya located in a wadi, or gully, that connects Yemen's highlands to the coastal plains of the Red Sea.
The age of the site puts it squarely at a time when early modern humans were thought to be first emigrating from Eastern Africa to the rest of the world. "The Arabian Peninsula is routinely considered as the corridor where migrating East African populations would have passed during a single or multiple dispersal events," says the study. "It has also been suggested that the groups who colonized South Asia rapidly expanded from South and East Africa along the Arabian coastlines around 60 ka BP (60,000 years ago), bringing with them a modern behavioral package including microlithic (stone) backed tools, ostrich-eggshell beads or engraved fragments.
One new site is the study's subject, Shi'bat Dihya, located along the Wadi Sudud. Excavating down to a level dating to perhaps 63,000 years ago, when the region was quite arid, the team found some '5,488 artifacts' - Stone Age blades, pointed blades and pointed flakes, nearly an inch long or longer, as well as the bones of 97 animals, mostly cows, horses, pigs and porcupines. Finding tool-makers so far inland, nearly 75 miles from the coast, surprised the study team, as most models of human expansion picture our ancestors migrating along the coasts on their way to Europe and Asia. (Source: USAToday (July 6, 2012))
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Verónica Fernandes et al, The Arabia Cradle: Mitochondrial Relicts of the First Steps along the Southern Route out of Africa, The American Journal of Human Genetics 90 (2012): 1-9.
“European researchers say genetic studies suggest the first humans leaving the Horn of Africa to the rest of the world first settled in Arabia.” “Arabia saw first humans out of Africa,” Science News, UPI.com, 1/26/2012 (Source)
Archaeogenetics indicate that the progenitor African group that gave birth to today’s human population migrated out of Africa into Arabia about 70,000 years ago. Richard Gray, writing for the Telegraph [UK] announced May 09, 2009:
“The entire human race outside Africa owes its existence to the survival of a single tribe of around 200 people who crossed the Red Sea 70,000 years ago, scientists have discovered… Research by geneticists and archaeologists has allowed them to trace the origins of modern homo sapiens back to a single group of people who managed to cross from the Horn of Africa and into Arabia. From there they went on to colonize the rest of the world.” (Source)
This is the face of the earliest known modern European — a man or woman, with startling African-like features. This sculpture was created by Richard Neave, one of Britain's leading forensic scientists, using fossilized fragments of skull and jawbone found in a cave several years ago. The face shows the close links between the first European settlers and their immediate African ancestors. This head is based on remains of one of the earliest known anatomically modern Europeans. The lower jawbone was discovered by potholers in the Carpathian mountains in Romania in 2002. The rest of the fragments were found the following year. The bones were carbon-dated to between 34,000 and 36,000 years ago when Europe was occupied by two species of human. They were the Neanderthals, who had arrived from Africa tens of thousands of years earlier, and the more recent modern human, also known as Cro-Magnons. (Source)
Posts: 1549 | From: California, USA | Registered: Jan 2006
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Horses are not supposed to be there, Was there an explanation of how horses were found in Arabia?
Quote: “European researchers say genetic studies suggest the first humans leaving the Horn of Africa to the rest of the world first settled in Arabia.”
That doesn't really make any sense does it.
Posts: 22721 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
Thank, Myra. From my understanding the first place inhabited was Adan, at Yemen.
Khaled K Abu-Amero et al.
Mitochondrial DNA structure in the Arabian Peninsula
quote: Two potential migratory routes followed by modern humans to colonize Eurasia from Africa have been proposed. These are the two natural passageways that connect both continents: the northern route through the Sinai Peninsula and the southern route across the Bab al Mandab strait.
Recent archaeological and genetic evidence have favored a unique southern coastal route. Under this scenario, the study of the population genetic structure of the Arabian Peninsula, the first step out of Africa, to search for primary genetic links between Africa and Eurasia, is crucial.
The haploid and maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) molecule has been the most used genetic marker to identify and to relate lineages with clear geographic origins, as the African Ls and the Eurasian M and N that have a common root with the Africans L3.
"Particularly, Yemen has the largest contribution of L lineages (30). So, most probably, this area was the entrance gate of a portion of these lineages in prehistoric times, which participated in the building of the primitive Arabian population."
Viktor Černý1 et al.
Migration of Chadic speaking pastoralists within Africa based on population structure of Chad Basin and phylogeography of mitochondrial L3f haplogroup
quote: We use high-resolution genetic data to investigate the genetic and linguistic support for hypotheses concerning the population history in the Chad Basin. The mitochondrial L3f3 haplogroup is found almost exclusively in Chadic speaking populations and its TMRCA corresponds well with archaeological and linguistic dates of the proposed migration of Chadic speaking pastoralists from East or North East Africa to the Chad Basin.
Haplogroup L3f is defined by the coding variants
3396-4218-15514-15944del and the control region motif 16209–16519 with a TMRCA of 57,100 ± 9,400 YBP. This haplogroup diversifies into sub-haplogroups L3f1, L3f2 and L3f3. The most geographically widespread sub-haplogroup is L3f1, which is distributed across the African continent [3] and also Arabia [32,33] and has a TMRCA of 48,600 ± 11,500 YBP.
..."The youngest clade, L3f1b2, seems to be more frequent in the Middle East. L3f1a seems to be older (37,700 ± 10,000 YBP) than its sister sub-haplogroup L3f1b and is also less diversified. A few samples from Chad belong to these sub-haplogroups: two to L3f1a and one to L3f1b3."
"We then estimated pairwise FST genetic distances between populations (Additional file 4) and displayed these on a MDS plot (Figure 3). Interesting results are immediately evident – while Chadic populations form a relatively homogeneous group, the Cushitic populations split into two completely different clusters. The first group is composed of Horn of African populations, such as Ethiopian and Somali Cushitic populations, which are close to neighbouring Ethiopian Semitic speaking groups and relatively close also to Chadic people from the Chad Basin. The second Cushitic group is composed by more southern groups from Tanzania, i.e. Burunge and Iraqw, who occupy outlier positions even within the Afro-Asiatic MDS plot. In the MDS plot, geography is more strongly associated with genetic distance than is linguistic affiliation.
Overall, we observe that Chadic speaking populations are intermixed with other populations from Chad Basin, including Niger-Congo, Semitic, and Berber speaking people. In this context, it seems that the linguistic categories play a secondary role in structuring the genetic diversity."
Posts: 22248 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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Horses are not supposed to be there, Was there an explanation of how horses were found in Arabia?
Quote: “European researchers say genetic studies suggest the first humans leaving the Horn of Africa to the rest of the world first settled in Arabia.”
That doesn't really make any sense does it.
Mike finding horses in Arabia is not a surprise. Although we mainly hear about horses in Eurasia Africans also early domesticated the horse.
Horses are native to Africa. The African horse was smaller than the Asian horse. These African migrants may have taken these horses to Arabia.
Also, horseback riding probably originated in Africa.
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