Humans may have all come from one African country, study says

Have you ever wondered where exactly humans came from? After all, we all had to originate from one group, did we not? This question of human origins has been posed many times. A group of Oxford researchers may have possibly figured out where our ancestors’ ancestors came from. The answer is one African country.

Human Origins Can Be Traced Back to One African Country

You’ve likely heard the phrase “we are all African” before. According to this new study from the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute, it may actually be true. They mapped out the largest-ever human family tree using the genetic relationships among humans to discover that human origins come from an area that is now modern-day Sudan. The research was done back in February of this year and is certainly highly intriguing, not only for discovering the origin of humanity but also for just how old human history is. (1)

How They Did It

The research team combined modern and genome data from eight different databases. They say we inherit individual genomic regions from just one of our parents, not both. Each point on the genome they call a tree, and each of these trees has its own “tree sequence.” They were then able to link genetic regions back through time to ancestors – all the way until when and where genetic variation first came about.

“We have basically built a huge family tree, a genealogy for all of humanity that models as exactly as we can the history that generated all the genetic variation we find in humans today,” said Dr. Yan Wong. “This genealogy allows us to see how every person’s genetic sequence relates to every other, along all the points of the genome.” (2)

Lead author Dr. Anthony Wilder Whons agreed, saying that it was essentially the largest-ever undertaking of human genome mapping. Researchers got the data from 3,609 individual genome sequences from 215 populations.

“Essentially, we are reconstructing the genomes of our ancestors and using them to form a vast network of relationships,” he said. “We can then estimate when and where these ancestors lived. The power of our approach is that it makes very few assumptions about the underlying data and can also include both modern and ancient DNA samples.”

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Humans Have Been Around For Much Longer Than We Thought

As already mentioned, the research team figured out that the original human species, who are every single human alive today’s ancestors, came from a region that is now modern Sudan. What was arguably the more shocking news was how long ago these ancestors of ours lived. The researchers found that this group of humans lived in what is now Sudan up to and potentially even over 1 million years ago. That is much older than the current estimates for homo sapiens, which is only 250,000 to 300,000 years ago.

A Powerful Approach

This approach by the researchers was extensive and allowed them to look at both modern and ancient genomes. The result of this was a network of almost 27 million ancestors. That is a pretty impressive feat.

“The power of our approach is that it makes very few assumptions about the underlying data and can also include both modern and ancient DNA samples,” said Dr. Whon.

These Humans Were Not Like Humans Today

As you can imagine, these ancestors of ours were not at all like we are today. They were an entirely different species of humans who simply led to the evolution of the homo sapiens and then eventually the modern day human beings.

The applications of these are not just simply for us to know and understand human origins. This data will help us to understand human geology better and this new method could help in other research, such as medicine. For example, Dr. Whon says that the underlying method could help with medical research such as identifying genetic predictors of disease risk. From there, we could design more personalized prevention regimens for people at risk for one disease and something else for another. It is a method that could be used in the future to save many lives.

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