Human Journeys

Human Journeys: Evolution

The evolutionary history of the human beings was not clear to science before a few decades ago. However, these days, there is a new important discovery every month on the history of the human evolution. The human beings have the same genetic codes with the rest of the species in the world. Most of the basic genetic traits of the human beings comes form a very long history of evolution since before the human lineage separated from the family tree of the ape species 6 million years ago. However, the human beings have their own unique characteristics that separates them from the rest of the species in the planet.

Common Theories

Most scientist believe that the basic answers can answer the question about where human being truly came from and how did human beings end up here. According to most scientist, modern human being first came from Africa. Human beings evolved first in Africa around 150,000 years ago and soon the human beings moved around the globe and colonized the world. However, there is a big debate on when this migration precisely started and what are the routes of this migration. There are theories telling that it was 50,000 years ago when a wave of migrations started from this place. The modern human beings migrated towards th northern part of Africa towards the Middle East. After that, the modern human being moved to Asia and Europe. There is another theory telling that the wave of migrations from Africa started 80,000 years ago. The settlers transferred via southern and northern routes. There is a third theory about this migration telling that there was a single rapid dispersal that happened 60,000 to 75,000 years ago. According to this study, the modern humans left Africa by traveling across the red sea. Then they followed a coastal route that led them south towards the Arabian Peninsula, India, Malaysia and Australia.

Kumarasamy Thangaraj

Kumarasamy Thangaraj is a geneticist from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India. He was the one who led the study of one of the theories above by investigating the population of the early modern humans at the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This area is near the coast of Thailand. The focus of his study is on the mitochondrial DNA. This is a genetic material that can be passed through the mother and can be seen in every human being. Human beings can be traced to a single female ancestor using this specialized DNA. His study traced back the history of the modern human beings to six different tribal populations. These populations are the Great Andamanese, Andamanese, Onge, and the Nicobarese. Each of these tribes migrated to different parts of the world.