A new study challenges the established views on the ancient expansion of mankind, offering an unexpected decision of the riddle, which is already 70,000 years old. Scientists suggest that the first migrations of modern people from Africa could stop for a long period on the Iranian plateau before continuing their distribution around the world.
Research decades indicated that Homo sapiens left Africa about 70,000 years ago, but the vast majority of evidence of the genetic diversity of our ancestors dates from only 45,000 years ago. Having combined genetic, paleoecological and archaeological data, a group of researchers claims that they found an answer to this ancient riddle, showing that humanity actually lingered on the Iranian plateau for more than 20,000 years.
“Our ancestors, from whom all modern Eurasians, Americans and residents of Oceania came from Africa between 70 and 60 thousand years ago,” said a press release from the study. After the achievement of Eurasia, these early settlers stopped for a while, forming a homogeneous population before starting their large-scale distribution in the continent and beyond.
The study is based on the analysis of DNA of both modern and ancient peoples, which allowed scientists to trace the path of expansion of mankind and its genetic diversity. Leonardo Wallini, a leading author of the study from the University of Padua in Italy, noted the difficulty of working due to the need to distinguish between various factors related to migrations and mixing of populations that occurred after settling on the Iranian plateau.
Thanks to progress in genetic science, researchers managed to determine the time of a person’s arrival on the Iranian plateau about 70,000 years ago, and also show that this population remained in place for millennia before starting its distribution in the world. An additional analysis of the DNA of ancient plants and the environment confirmed that the Iranian plateau was more suitable for long-term residence of people than other parts of ancient East Asia.
“With our work, we found a house for 20,000 years of the common story between Europeans, Eastern Asians, Indigenous Americans and Oceanians,” said the senior author of the study, Professor Luke Pagani. The importance of this opening is emphasized by the fact that it was at this time that the genes with Neanderthals were mixed.
A study published in the journal Nature Communications , offers a new look at a difficult journey of human populations, Planning the previous ideas about our expansion in Eurasia. This discovery can be a starting point for future research, similarly as the Iranian