The study, published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature, puts a tombstone to the hitherto dominant theory that human species turned into one of its regions Africaduring a certain period.

In particular, studies show that human ancestors developed in parallel in different regions of the continent and came into contact with each other much later. After analyzing the genes of 290 living people, scientists concluded that modern humans descended from at least two different populations that coexisted in Africa without meeting for at least a million years.

A new study refutes the theory of a single birthplace on the African continent, as populations have coexisted – without meeting – for millions of years.

Paleoanthropologists and geneticists have for decades concluded from data that our species originated in Africa.

In 2017, a 300,000-year-old fossil jaw very similar to ours was discovered in Morocco, and stone tools found in places like Ethiopia and South Africa indicate that the first humans as we know them lived on the Black Continent. Today.

Another proof of the above theory is the fact that the indigenous people of Africa differ significantly in DNA from other people. This is because the species lived and developed in Africa for a long time before some small populations began to spread to other continents, eventually creating individual smaller “gene pools”.

Neanderthals

Although they could not come to a definitive conclusion as to which region was the first where the populations that evolved into modern humans appeared, the researchers concluded that there were two groups, which they called “clone 1” and “clone 1”. ‘.

About 600,000 years ago, the populations that emerged from clone 1 moved to Europe and became the Neanderthals, who ultimately did not survive. Other populations of clone 1 remained in Africa for tens of thousands of years and met with populations of clone 2, having children together and mixing their DNA.

DNA mutations

“If the two strands didn’t touch, we would have significant mutations between the two DNA,” says Dr. Brenna Henn, professor of genetics at the University of California, Davis. “Instead, the differences between the two groups, from the same era, seem to be the same as between a modern European and a modern African,” he adds.

Studies of the rural population in South Africa indicate with reasonable certainty that about 120,000 years ago, a “meeting” took place in this region that was destined to change the history of mankind. This meeting probably occurred due to the pressure of climatic conditions that brought both groups to the common areas.

However, even 120,000 years later, individuals with DNA derived exclusively from clone 2 appear to have survived in Sierra Leone. “It seems almost certain to me that West Africa is the reservoir of the human species. However, the radical differences that exist within our species could be the key to the success of our study,” says another researcher.