The first humans to leave Africa, 1,950,00 years ago, were the Homo ergasters. Some think that they may have been two different sister species, Homo erectus and Homo halbilis. They coexisted for 450,00 years with  Homo erectus  surviving in Asia and dominating the world for nearly a million years. Then Homo rhodesiensis left Africa about a million years ago with the Acheulian culture. Then about 250,000 to 300,000 years ago, a time when there were no Neanderthals or humans, Homo helmei spread out of Africa to cover Eurasia and may have been the progenitor of  Homo neanderthalensis in Eurasia as well as modern man in Africa.  Homo sapiens are believed to have evolved over 195,000 years ago during a near extinction of the Homo lines in Africa. Studies show that both the mitochondrial and Y chromosome trees first branch out about 144,000 years ago.

A mitochondrial DNA study of the human head louse, a type that is found only in the Americas and evolved on Homo erectus, but jumped to Homo sapiens  between 50,000 and 25,000 years ago suggest cross species contact, probably in Asia. “I think it is amazing to know that we had physical contact with another species of human,” said David Reed, curator of mammals at University of Florida's Museum of Natural History and the lead author on the three year study. “We either battled with them, or lived with them, or even mated with them. Regardless, we touched them, and that is pretty dramatic to think about.”  However  a prior independent analysis did not yield the same two geographical lineage's of the lice and the subject is still open to further study. A new genetic study, by Reed and collaborators, of pubic lice suggests the parasites were transferred between early humans and gorillas about 3.3 million years ago. One must wonder if Homo Sapiens breed with Homo erectus and if so why not with Homo neanderthal among others.

In a study of a mutation in the gene MC1R from 24,000 year old Neanderthals, led by Holger Roempler of Harvard, Carles Lalueza-Fox of the University of Barcelona and Michael Hofreiter of the Max Planck Institute, has shown that it may have had a reduced function in pigmentation that could have produced red hair and lighter skin color and is similar to a slightly different human mutation. Also in 2006 researchers discovered that Neanderthals  had the gene known to influence speech in modern humans.

The Expansion Model

As shown by Dr. Alan Templeton of Washington University, Saint Louis, who analyzed many different gene trees based on human DNA sequence data showed that humans long had genetic interconnections all over the globe. He showed that there were at least  three major waves of human migration out of Africa. DNA evidence suggests also that these wanderers bred with the people they encountered, rather than replaced them, in a "make-love not-war" scenario.

Svante Paabo, of the Max Planck Institute  and Edward Rubin of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and their collaborators have presented their preliminary analysis, in November 2006, in Nature and Science respectively of a bone fragment of a male Neanderthal found in a Croatian cave with a reported age of 38,000 years. Their early conclusions suggest that the modern man and  Neanderthal split about 516,000 years ago (Paabo) or 370,000 years ago (Rubin) and that there is a 99.5% to 99.9% similarity in their DNA. The question if Neanderthals interbred with modern humans was not approached, however it did raise speculation that DNA from anatomically modern humans might have found its way into Neanderthals.  A team headed by Bruce T Lahn of the University of Chicago has reported that a gene that originated in humans 37,000 years ago now appears in 70% of the worlds population. The analysis  indicated that this gene  was possessed  by some other now extinct homo line about a million years ago and it was passed on to the Stone Age people. Michael F Hammer of the University of Arizona in Tucson said that this gene adds to the genetic evidence of interbreeding among various lines of human ancestors, both inside and outside of Africa.

When the Homo sapiens left Africa and expanded around the globe they took  their viruses with them which included the papilloma viruses. As the different populations became isolated so did these viruses. After a 100,000 years the genealogy of the papilloma viruses reflects that of human genealogy, says  Carl Zimmer in the January 2007 issue of Scientific American,  where the  oldest virus lineage  is most common in Africa while the virus of the Native Americans show their relation  to the Asians.

The most recent study  that has recovered about 60 % of the Neanderthal nuclear DNA by Svante Paabo and others (Science, May 7, 2010) showed that Neanderthal interbreeding did occur not in Europe but in the Middle East some 100,000 to 60,000 years ago. The study concluded that about 1 percent to 4 percent of the genome of non-Africans today is derived from the Neanderthals. Since, at this time, no Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA was found in the human m-DNA this would most likely indicate that the male Neanderthals and not the females passed their nuclear DNA to modern humans. (See: Scientific American July 2010). Also the difference between Neanderthal and human DNA is about the same as the difference between humans today.

The modified Out of Africa theory indicates a hominid population migrated into the Middle East, Europe and Western Asia about 400,000 years ago these being the Neanderthals. However a Paleolithic-era member of the genus Homo named Denisovan that may have ranged from Siberia to Southeast Asia show up in 6% of the mtDNA of Melanesians and Australian Aborigines.   The Denisovan migration out of Africa is believed to be prior to the Neanderthals and modern humans, but later then that of Homo erectus. The Homo floresiensis in Indonesia, the Denisovans, the Homo sapiens and Neanderthals lineages may have inhabited Eurasia contemporaneously. These groups had split into separate populations by 400,000 years ago. The Neanderthal lineage migrated northwestward into West Asia and Europe, and the Denisovan lineage moved northeastward into East Asia. The ancestors of modern man made its departure from Africa about 65,000 years ago and they too expanded into Eurasia where they encountered the other groups.

The first modern humans to leave Africa, about 120,000 years ago, during a interglacial optimum, went into the Levant but disappeared by 90,000 years ago when this area became a desert. This desert area was connected with the Sahara in North Africa and left isolated small groups of individuals, maybe in the Nile Delta and the Mediterranean Coast of Morocco, but more definitely in what is now Eritrea. The remaining human populations were restricted to that area south of the Sahara Desert, sub Saharan Africa.  According to the out-of-Africa view as given by Stephen Oppenheimer, developed by studying the mtDNA and the Y-chromosome, is that all modern humans outside of Africa descended from this isolated group on the Red Sea after they crossed to the Arabian Peninsula to present time Yemen, at a time of low ocean height about 80,000 years ago.

The recent study shows that the two populations meet between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago and mated before migrating to East Asia and Europe. The belief is that all other humans outside of Africa such as those in the Levant, the remaining Neanderthals and Homo erectus went extinct. Homo floresiensis may be another line but is still a questionable subject.

The Europeans did not come directly from Africa nor did they come as one group. The early migration, out of Africa, is believed to have followed the southern Asian coastline from Arabia to southeast Asia, branching to the Polar Desert in northeast Asia and to Australia by island hoping as early as 60,000 years ago.

Spencer Wells, using analysis from the Genographic Project,  shows that there were two waves out of Africa. The first wave were the people who did follow the coastal route to Australia. Then a second wave, about 45,000  to 50,000 years ago left Africa and found their way to the Middle East and from there spread around the world pressing the first wave to the coastal area of their migration path.

  How these people entered the Middle East is not certain but one explanation is that these people came from what is now the submerged land in the Arabian Gulf near India, during a brief interstadial period in this glacial era and were able to enter the Fertile Crescent area of Iraq, which had been a desert previous to this time. This allowed the settlement and passage into present day Syria and Turkey about 50,000 years ago. By 46,000 years ago this Aurignacian culture moved into Bulgaria and up the Danube to Hungary, Austria and Germany. While this was occurring it also spread to Italy, Spain and then to the Portuguese coast and southern France by 38,000 years ago. These modern people  were co-existing with the Neanderthals by 30-35,000 years ago in the southwest of France and the south of Portugal.

A second group entered Europe with the Gravettian culture between 21,000 and 30,000 years ago and are believed to have originated between the Black Sea and the Caucasus Mountains or alternately from south Asia going around the eastern part of the Caspian Sea.  These people then expanded across northern Europe as far as France.

At the height of the Last Glacial Maximum, about 18,000 years ago, most of Northern Europe was unoccupied. By about 12,500 BC, the remaining people in western Europe were confined to today's southern France and northwestern Spain on both sides of the Pyrenees and were known as the Solutrean culture. A second culturally distinct area was in Italy and a third area was in the Ukraine north of the Black Sea with several other small areas of occupation in Slovakia and Moldavia. By 9,000 BC the populations had moved back into France proper and then all of  Europe while the Indo Europeans were migrating westward and by 2250 BC most of all of Western Europe was reoccupied. At this time the people, in the Normandy area, were called the Celto Italics and by 1800 BC the Celto-Ligurians and then the Celts by 1575 BC. The La Tene culture was developed by 415 BC and the people were called the Gauls by 375 BC.  In 44 BC this area was populated by a Gallo-Roman culture. Then by 500 AD Frankish settlers became well established in the area . In the late ninth century AD the Vikings established bases in the area and in 911 Rollo, a Norseman, was recognized by King Charles III of France as the overlord of Eastern Normandy.

Despite all the cultural and political changes in this time frame, the Western Europeans remained, essentially, genetically the same as the survivors of the last glacial period. Archaeologist David Miles in his book The Tribes of Britain  states that about 80% of the British genes are from the Ice Age migration. Since Britain was more isolated than France after the rise in sea level, one might expect a smaller number as the populations further south and east are examined.


Below is the order of the Markers that appeared which distinguishes the different haplogroups. The markers were numbered in the order that they were discovered. This shows that  haplogroup E3b split from the others, then the remaining groups split from each other with the J haplogroup separating into J1 and J2 .

Ref:  Deep Ancestry - Spencer Wells

E3b - "Adam"  >   M42       >        M168      >    YAP      >     M96      >       M2
K2  -  "Adam"   >   M42       >        M168      >    M89     >     M9        >        M70
R1b- "Adam"   >   M42       >        M168     >    M89     >     M9         >       M207     >     M173     >     M343
I1a -  "Adam"   >   M42       >        M168     >    M89     >     M170    >       M253
J1  -   "Adam"   >   M42       >        M168     >     M89     >    M304     >      M267
G   -   "Adam"     >   M42       >      M168     >     M89     >    M201

E       -   This haplogroup first appeared in northeast Africa. They may have left in the second wave of migration into the Middle East.
E3b  -   These were some of the first farmers who spread across the Mediterranean.

G     -    The National Geographic Society places haplogroup G origins in the Middle East 30,000 years ago.
 
I       -   A Middle Eastern clan who migrated to the Balkans and then into Central Europe about 21,000 to 28,000 years ago.
             They were forced in the last ice age into the Balkans and Iberia.
I1a  -    20,000 years ago this haplogroup sought refuge from the Ice Age on the Iberian Peninsula. Later, 15,000 years ago, they expanded
             over Western Europe. Today they are found in Northwestern Europe with a high frequency in western Scandinavia.

J       -   The patriarch of the J haplogroup was born about 15,000 years ago in the Fertile crescent.
J1     -   Emerged in the Middle East during the Neolithic Revolution. They were the successful farmers and spread to North Africa where it is in
             its highest frequency. They are also found at low frequencies in western Europe.
J2     -   J2 like J1 is from the Middle East, then Northern Africa and Southern Europe. In Italy its frequency is 20% and in southern Spain it is 10%.

R      -   An Asian clan that split, one going towards Europe and then much later the other within the last 10,000 years went to India.
R1    -   These are the descendants of the first large scale human settlers in Europe about 35,000 years ago. The Ice Age forced them into Spain, Italy
              and the Balkans.
R1b  -   These were the Cro-Magnon people who migrated out of the area north and south of the Pyrenees to cover  western Europe .

K - The M9 mutation first appeared around 40,000 years ago in Iran or south-central Asia. They migrated around their local world until they were blocked by the Hindu Kush, the Tian Shan, and the Himalayas. This area is known as the Pamir Knot located in Tajkistan. Here they split into different groups and today represent nearly all North Americans and East Asians including most of the Europeans and and many from India.
K2 - Those who stayed in the Pamir Knot developed the M70 mutation about 30,000 years ago. This group dispersed across the Mediterranean along the coast of North Africa and Europe. They may have been the Phoenician traders from modern Lebanon.  The highest frequency today is in the Middle east (15%) and in northeastern Africa. They are also found in southern Spain and France.