Cradle of humanity

DNA points to the cradle of humanity Homo sapiens evolved in a vast wetland that once covered what is now northern Botswana, and stayed there for around 70,000 years before beginning our outward migrations. That’s the finding based on the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of 200 people from rarely studied groups in southern Africa, including some who have the oldest mtDNA known in living people. Critics of the work aren’t convinced that the mtDNA of a couple of hundred living people is enough to make such bold claims about our species’ real-life Garden of Eden. “It tells us very little about human origins as a whole,” says geneticist Carina Schlebusch. “It only tells us about the origin of a very small part of the human genome, and nothing more.” The Atlantic | 7 min readReference: Nature paper