Humans migrated towards the sea

LIKE bank holiday trippers, the first modern humans who migrated from Africa probably headed for the seaside, new research suggests.

Genetic evidence points to a migration route from East Africa that followed the coast of the Indian Ocean.

Scientists had previously thought the exodus took place northward along the Nile and across the Sinai peninsula to Europe and Asia.

The new theory might explain why Europe appears to have been settled thousands of years later than Australia.

In Europe, indigenous Neanderthals were replaced by the ancestors of modern humans only about 30,000 to 40,000 years ago.

But southern Australia is known to have been inhabited by early modern humans 46,000 years ago, and northern Australia and southeast Asia even earlier.

Scientists plot early human migrations by studying mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) - a kind of DNA only inherited maternally - in people living today.

The degree of variation among the mDNA of different groups reflects the amount of time that has elapsed since they diverged from each other.

Two different teams writing in the journal, Science, use this approach to support the coastal route hypothesis.

One study, led by Vincent Macaulay, of the University of Glasgow, focused on the aboriginal Orang Asli people of Malaysia.

DNA analysis suggests they are descended from a “founder” population that arrived about 60,000 years ago, soon after their ancestors left Africa.