Hi all--

New research of interest reported in the journal Science.  Two stories on
this subject published on May 13-14, 2005, on BBC News and the Telegraph.

Roger Highfield, Science Editor for the Telegraph:

"The lure of a seafood diet may explain why the first people left Africa,
according to a genetic analysis published today that overturns the
conventional picture of the very first migration of modern humans.

The international project shows - contrary to previous thinking - that
early modern humans spread across the Red Sea from the horn of Africa,
along the tropical coast of the Indian Ocean towards the Pacific in just a
few thousand years.

And it suggests that the first migratory wave probably included fewer than
600 women, the


mothers of all non-Africans alive today - including modern
Europeans....

The new insight...emerged from DNA evidence described today in the journal
Science by the Leeds biologist Martin Richards, the Glasgow statistician
Vincent Macauley and colleagues.

Early modern humans in East Africa initially survived on an inland diet
based on big game but by 70,000 years ago, archaelogical finds suggest
their diet had changed to a coastal one consisting largely of shellfish.

However, climate change seems likely to have reduced the Red Sea's
shellfish stocks, driving them to seek better fishing grounds.

The team studied DNA from aboriginal populations of South East Asia....

Comparing their DNA with that of other people around the world allowed the
team to piece together what happened in those formative years...."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr


/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4543767.stm

--Ed