Researchers believe they have discovered the place where humanity started and it seems that we all have originated from the same place — Botswana.
In the new study, the revelations include looking at genetic information of over 1,2000 people across African populations — which led them to find that the genes preserved in people’s DNA first emerged in the area.
The data was based on ‘mitochondrial DNA’ (mtDNA) which is passed down through females.
While scientists already at large agree that modern humans (homo sapiens) came from Africa about 200,000 years but until now, it has been unclear which continent we first came from.
The new information clashes with the limited evidence based on fossils which suggested our ancestors first emerged in East Africa.
Vannessa Hayes, anthropologist and senior author of the newspaper, said in a press conference that the findings suggested “everyone walking around today” could trace their mitochondrial DNA back to the area.
Thanks to new research, it has been revealed that for 70,000 years, the first humans thrived in the area now known as Botswana, which was originally a wetland south of Zambezi River.
But due to climate change, what was once the largest lake on the continent is now known as the Kalahri Desert.
This means that the people who lived there were forced to migrate to other places between 130,000 and 110,000 years ago.
It is believed that this move began the development of genetic, ethnic and cultural diversity.
But researchers a few years back claimed to have discovered a footprint in Crete, Greece, that may fundamentally alter the narrative when it comes to early human evolution. It is very possible our ancestors were in modern Europe far earlier than we initially believed.
Ever since researchers discovered fossils of our early ancestors in South and East Africa in the middle of the 20th century, the history of humanity as been concrete.
That was until the footprint discovered in Crete (which dates back 5.7 million years) — which confirms that humans have been exploring central Europe for even longer than we first thought.
“This discovery challenges the established narrative of early human evolution head-on and is likely to generate a lot of debate,” said Professor Per Ahlberg, an author on the study at the time.
“Whether the human origins research community will accept fossil footprints as conclusive evidence of the presence of hominins [part of the family of primates that includes humans] in the Miocene of Crete remains to be seen.”