Brazil

United S
tates Mongolia

The Greatest Journey

Modern
genetic evid
ence indicates humans left Africa as long as 70,000 y
ears ago. Fann
in g out across the continents, they gave rise to new faces and races

1 Everybody loves a good story, and when Tracing Ancestry in DNA

it’s finished, this may be the greatest one
ever told. It begins in Africa with a group of “Every drop of human blood contains a
people, perhaps just a few hundred, surviving history book written in the language of our
5 by hunting animals and gathering fruits, genes,” says population geneticist3 Spencer
vegetables, and nuts. It ends about 200,000 30 Wells. The human genetic code, or genome,
years later with their six and a half billion is 99.9 percent identical throughout the world.
descendants spread across the Earth, living in But while the bulk of our DNA is the same,
peace or at war, their faces lit by campfires1 what’s left is responsible for our individual
10 and computer screens. differences—in eye color or disease risk, for
35 example. On very rare occasions, a small
In between is an exciting tale of survival, change, called a mutation, can occur, which
movement, isolation, and conquest, most of is then passed down to all of that person’s
it occurring before recorded history. Who descendants. Generations later, finding
were those first modern people in Africa? that same mutation in two people’s DNA
15 What routes did they take when they left their 40 indicates that they share the same ancestor.
home continent 50,000 years ago to expand By comparing mutations in many different
into Europe and Asia? When and how did populations, scientists can trace their
humans reach the Americas? For decades the ancestral connections.
only proof was found in a small number of
20 scattered bones and artifacts2 our ancestors These ancient mutations are easiest to find
left behind on their journeys. In the past 20 45 in two places: in DNA that is passed from
years, however, increasingly refined DNA mother to child (called mitochondrial DNA,
technologies have allowed scientists to find a or mtDNA for short), and in DNA that
record of ancient human migrations in travels from father to son (known as the Y
25 the DNA of living people. chromosome, the part of DNA that determines
50 a child will be a boy). By comparing the
mtDNA and Y chromosomes of people from
1
A campfire is a fire that is made outdoors, usually for warmth
or cooking. various populations, geneticists can get a rough
2
An artifact is a human-made ornament, tool, or other object, idea of where and when those groups separated
especially one that is historically or culturally interesting.
3
A geneticist is a scientist who studies DNA and genes. in the great migrations around the planet.

5A The DNA Trail 75

 Ancestral Out of Africa Eurasian Amerindian
All males share Migrants from M9, common M3 arose in the
this basic Africa carried a in Eurasians, Asian population
configuration, new marker, appeared in the that reached the
rooted in Africa. M168, found in Middle East or Americas.
all non-Africans. Central Asia.

Genetic mutations act

as markers, tracing a
journey through time.
The earliest known mutation
to spread outside Africa
is M168, which arose
some 50,000 years ago.
This graphic shows the Y
chromosome of a Native
American man with various
mutations, including M168,
proving his African ancestry.

55 Out of Africa of thousands of years. Moving a little further

with each new generation, they followed the
In the mid-1980s, a study compared mtDNA coast around the Arabian Peninsula, India,
from women around the world and found and Southeast Asia, all the way to Australia.
that women of African descent showed twice 90 “The movement was probably imperceptible,”5
as many genetic mutations as other women. says Spencer Wells. “It was less of a journey
60 Because mutations seem to occur at a steady and probably more like walking a little farther
rate over time, scientists were able to conclude down the beach to get away from the crowd.”
that modern humans must have lived in Africa
twice as long as anywhere else. They now Although archeological6 evidence of this
calculate that all living humans are related to 95 13,000-kilometer (8,000-mile) migration
65 a single woman who lived roughly 150,000 from Africa to Australia has almost completely
years ago in Africa, a “mitochondrial Eve.” If vanished, genetic traces of the group that made
geneticists are right, all of humanity is linked the trip do exist. They have been found in the
to Eve through an unbroken chain of mothers. DNA of indigenous7 peoples in the Andaman
Eve was soon joined by “Y chromosome 100 Islands near Myanmar, in Malaysia, and in
70 Adam,” the genetic father of us all, also from Papua New Guinea, and in the DNA of nearly
Africa. DNA studies have confirmed that all all Australian aborigines. Modern discoveries of
the people on Earth, with all their shapes 45,000-year-old bodies in Australia, buried at a
and colors, can trace their ancestry to site called Lake Mungo, provide some physical
ancient Africans. 105 evidence for the theories as well.

75 What seems virtually certain is that at a People in the rest of Asia and Europe share
remarkably recent date—probably between different but equally ancient mtDNA and
50,000 and 70,000 years ago—one small Y-chromosome mutations. These mutations
group of people, the ancestors of all modern show that they are descendants of the group
humans, left Africa for western Asia, either by 110 that stayed in the Middle East for tens of
80 migrating around the northern end of the Red thousands of years before moving on. Perhaps
Sea or across its narrow southern opening. about 40,000 years ago, modern humans
advanced into Europe.
Once in Asia, genetic evidence suggests, 4
If a process stalls, or if someone or something stalls it, the process
the population split. One group stalled4 stops but may continue at a later time.
Something that is imperceptible is so small it is not noticed or
temporarily in the Middle East, while the other
5

cannot be seen.
85 commenced a journey that would last tens 6
Archeology is the study of the past through examination of the remains
of things such as buildings, tools, and other objects.
7
Indigenous people or things belong to the country in which they
are found, rather than coming there or being brought there from
76 Unit 5 Human Journey another country.
 Spencer Wells, head of the National Geographic Society’s
Genographic Project. It will analyze DNA from hundreds of thousands
Peopling the Americas of people to map how prehistoric humans populated the planet.

115 About the same time as modern humans trip.” Once across, they followed the immense
pushed into Europe, some of the same group herds8 of animals into the mainland and spread
that had paused in the Middle East spread 135 to the tip of South America in as little as a
east into Central Asia, where they eventually thousand years.
reached as far as Siberia, the Korean peninsula, Genetic researchers can only tell us the basic
120 and Japan. Here begins one of the last chapters outlines of a story of human migration that
in the human story—the peopling of the is richer and more complex than any ever
Americas. Most scientists agree that today’s written. Most of the details of the movements
140
Native Americans descend from ancient of our ancestors and their countless9 individual
Asians who crossed from Siberia to Alaska in lives in different times and places can only be
125 the last ice age, when low sea levels would imagined. But thanks to genetic researchers,
have exposed a land bridge between the themselves descendants of mtDNA Eve and
continents. They probably traveled along the Y-chromosome Adam, we have begun to
145
coast—perhaps a few hundred people moving unlock important secrets about the origins
from one piece of land to the next, between and movements of our ancient ancestors.
130 a freezing ocean and a wall of ice. “A coastal
route would have been the easiest way in,” says 8
A herd is a large group of animals of one kind that live together.
Wells. “But it still would have been a hell of a 9
Countless means very many.

5A The DNA Trail 77