Discover calls the research "complex, even for genomic studies," but the gist is this: While humans may have left Africa in two (or more) waves—and as early as 120,000 years ago—the populations that left early died out (either on their own or with help from subsequent waves), leaving all of us to trace our ancestry to a single wave of African migrants.
The exception to this is the natives of Papua New Guinea, at least 2 percent of whom show some DNA evidence of earlier migration waves, the BBC reports.
The exception to this is the natives of Papua New Guinea, at least 2 percent of whom show some DNA evidence of earlier migration waves, the BBC reports.
Researchers found no other such evidence in hundreds of populations around the world. The most important impact of the studies, which the Times calls a "series of unprecedented genetic analyses," may be in our understanding of the human genome.
To conduct the studies, researchers created high-quality genome sequences from people in more than 270 indigenous populations around the world. That information could one day help scientists understand and treat a whole host of genetic conditions.
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