In the quest for the origins of humanity, a recent study provides fascinating new revelations. According to a report, it appears that early modern humans migrated from Africa as a homogenous population to settle in a key region, encompassing Iran, southeastern Iraq and northeastern Iraq. Saudi Arabia, before venturing into Europe and Asia around 70,000 years ago. Researchers have described this region, part of the Persian Plateau, as a “central point” for these first inhabitants, who are only estimated in the thousands, before continuing, millennia later, their journey towards more distant destinations, reports The Independent.
The new study data reveals that these people lived in small, mobile bands of hunter-gatherers. Anthropologist and study co-author Michael Petraglia, director of the Australian Research Center for Human Evolution at Griffith University, noted that the focal point location offered a variety of ecological environments, ranging from forests to grasslands and savannahs, with fluctuations over time between arid and humid periods.
The report also mentions that the inhabitants of the central point were apparently dark-skinned, suggesting a resemblance to the Gumuz or Anuak peoples currently living in parts of East Africa. This subsequent dispersal in different directions beyond the central point would have laid the foundation for genetic divergence between East Asians and Europeans, the researchers concluded.
This new study invites us to explore more deeply the origins of humanity and leads us to visualize these first hunter-gatherers evolving in the varied landscapes of the Persian Plateau, thus bringing to life a previously unknown part of human history.