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Palaeoanthropology

Coasting out of Africa

Nature volume 405, pages 25–27 (2000) Cite this article

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It is now generally accepted that Africa is the ancestral homeland of modern humans, Homo sapiens1,2,3. But the timing of human dispersal from Africa, and the routes taken, remain controversial. Was there only one major dispersal, which took place after 50,000 years ago1? Or were there several episodes of migration, starting earlier and covering a longer period of time2? Moreover, was the most obvious route taken — through Sinai and the Levant (the eastern Mediterranean coast) — or might there have been other pathways?

Walter et al.4 recovered Middle Stone Age (African Middle Palaeolithic) artefacts, such as hand axes and obsidian flakes, from strata in a raised fossil reef near Abdur in Eritrea. Geomorphological considerations and correlation with other Red Sea localities suggest that the site dates to the last interglacial. Walter and colleagues confirmed this age with uranium-series dates that, on average, gave a figure of about 125,000 years. Who made the artefacts is unknown. But there are fossils of near-modern or modern H. sapiens from around this time1,2 in neighbouring regions such as Ethiopia (Omo Kibish), Sudan (Singa), Kenya (Guomde) and Israel (Skhul and Qafzeh). So it is likely that the people concerned were early members of our species.

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Figure 1: Chronology for the Late Pleistocene1.
Figure 2: The Old World as it might have looked during the Late Pleistocene, around 65,000 years ago.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Human Origins Research Group Department of Palaeontology, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD, UK

    Chris Stringer

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  1. Chris Stringer
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Stringer, C. Coasting out of Africa. Nature 405, 25–27 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35011166

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