Going back in time and doing a lot of investigations, scientists are tracing the ancestral home of humans. They believe that this place existed and now is situated in Botswana. The scientists are also coming with numbers regarding the population that lived in the south region of the Zambezi River. We all know the story of the beginning of Homo sapiens, but we don’t know the exact place.
The study
More than 200.000 years ago, the Homo sapiens were living around the Zambezi River. They were the ones that provided the perfect space for modern humans. Finally, now we know that modern humans are not only originated from Africa but the exact location. The study conducted by Vanessa Hayes, who is the senior author and who works as a geneticist at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sidney.
The study is now published, and you can find out that the scientists’ method to find out the new information was to use the mitochondrial DNA. The mitochondrial DNA is the one that is passed down from mother to child. With this piece of information, they determined the maternal line of humans, the oldest one.
Besides this, the researchers used more than 1.217 samples of mitochondrial DNA for their analysis. Of course, there are experts, scientists that aren’t agreeing with the conclusion of this new study. All the genetic material was used by people that are currently living in Southern Africa today.
On the other hand, Chris stringer, who works at the Natural History Museum in London, is the one saying that you can’t take for granted a small study. Africa is a significant and complex continent, so the small portion of the genome or only one region isn’t enough to find out the origins of humans.
Finally, some archaeologists don’t agree with the suggestion of the study. The migration of the population out and in Africa can’t lead to a more precise conclusion.