Out of Africa expansions and the genetic legacy of human occupation

in North-East Africa

 

Luca Pagani 1,2

1 APE lab, Department of Biology, University of Padova, Italy

2 Estonian Biocentre, Tartu, Estonia

 

 

The African origin of our species and its subsequent expansion towards Eurasia has been widely accepted and confirmed both from archaeological and genetic perspectives. However, the number of pulses, expansion dynamics and routes followed during these major human movements have been subject of hot scientific debate. With the advent of the genomic era some of these long standing questions have been successfully addressed, while others, concerning for example the number of pulses, got more and more puzzling. From a modern genomic perspective, contemporary Egyptians seem to harbour the clearest signature of the major Out of Africa expansion that took place after 70.000 years ago, hence pointing to a human population continuity in the broader North-East African region. On the other hand, ancient DNA just started to revolutionize our current understanding of the North African genetic landscape, fuelling the debate with a number of alternative models implying massive population replacements from the Levant.