Rebecca L Cann, University of Hawaii–Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
Published online: July 2006
DOI: 10.1038/npg.els.0005075
Human populations began a separate evolutionary genetic trajectory about 6 million years ago, but the common ancestors of all modern human populations share a more recent past, and generally trace back to less than 1 million years ago. Estimating the exact age of these genetic ancestors, who likely came out of Africa and dispersed around the world, depends on the particular set of genes examined.
Keywords: mitochondrial DNA; Y-DNA; paleoanthropology; dispersal; isolation; speciation; gene flow
| Further Reading | |
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| Wolpoff MH, Hawks J, Frayer DW and Huntley K (2001) Modern human ancestry at the peripheries: a test of the replacement hypothesis. Science 291: 293–297. | |
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