Out of Africa

Thanks to both genetic and archeological evidence, most experts are now convinced that the human race was born in Africa. In some ways, human beings were born in and migrated from Africa in at least two main waves.

Roughly 2 million years ago, we see the development of the genus Homo with the birth of Homo erectus. Arising in the central east coast of Africa, humans moved out of Africa and into Asia and Europe over the following million years. The dating of the finds so far indicates that migration turned east towards China and South East Asia, before turning towards Europe.

While it may be that in each of these regions evolutionary development proceeded apace, it also appears that modern humans or Homo sapiens were actually born in the same African “Garden of Eden” and then migrated to the rest of the world. The dates are of course rough estimates, but it would appear that they reached the northern and southern ends of the African continent around 90,000 BCE, then again moved initially eastward reaching what would have then been the connected Australian land mass by 40,000 BCE. A later parallel process took them to the European peninsula around 50,000 BCE.