This left here is a very unassuming beach in East Africa. Because of the prevailing dangerous underwater currents called it "Bab-el-Mandab" or "the gates of sorrow." Here is the narrowest part in the Red Sea, and it tells a story of courage, fear and hope. This story was reconstructed using advanced genetic techniques and procedures. And it comes not from a dime novel. ... There was a minor species of mammals that lived about 70,000 years ago in Africa. She was neither particularly big nor particularly fast or strong, and her beauty was within manageable limits. She supported in principle by all that met her - a bit of fruit, roots, fungi hunt, and they could also reasonably. Unfortunately, the climate was much to her - the former glacial caused that more and more water was pooled in the form of ice, so that the earth more and more dried out. Food was scarce. The poor species have escaped first by collecting shellfish on the beach, but soon also the stocks were exhausted. Of the poor animals there were on earth, only about 2,000 copies - they were threatened with extinction by today's standards. A group of them sat hungry at the beach of Bab-el-Mandab and counted the survivors. It was in this group 150, a maximum of 200th This species was homo sapiens sapiens. She was at the end. But
see her! - On the other side of the strait attracted the mountains of present-day Yemen. There was food in abundance - just as is you there? Long live the Red Sea coast or along the Nile? Probably not - you had to overcome the inhospitable Sahara, which at that time was particularly hostile. What remained was the breakneck companies crossing the waters - 20 km of sea with no nautical experience. But the group has done it. Of these 150-200 people, we are all - apart from some African tribes - really from all . This could be observed by comparing the mitochondrial (inherited from the mother) and Y-chromosomal DNA (from papa). Once the adventurers were on the Arabian peninsula, they could (or their children) along the coast of Persia, India and Indonesia penetrate as far as Australia. Lateral branches were swept away to Europe and the Neanderthals ( here you can hear the songs). Humanity was a poor little group of the last survivor to a 6.3 billion-strong army.
An important consequence of the fact that there were then only 150 -200 folks, is the degree of genetic similarity of most people. In a group of gorillas, one can find a greater genetic diversity than in the whole of humanity. The idea of any "superior race" can lubricate the brown "thought leaders" on the nose - we're all so close together related, as it does not get any closer.
Strange thoughts go through your mind. - What if the few desperadoes would not have married at that time? If they were lost in the sea? If it had on the other side but not given as much food as expected? Would we then still a minor subspecies of mammals in equatorial Africa? Or we could have managed not to this day and had been carried off by a virus, which is in Africa are not known to too few? Who has been the leader of the group, who then proposed the dangerous action, as he was or looked like, we do not know. However, we should from time to remember him gratefully. If I have time and money, I would definitely like to go to this beach, there idly throwing stones into the water and eagerly look across to Yemen.
( Here can find out the walk of his own ancestors by DNA testing. The project, for example, a Greek woman and an Indian together who have a common great-mother. This was the first reunion of the two distant " siblings "since 30,000 years ago.)
