{"id":29869,"date":"2025-06-18T15:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T15:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29869"},"modified":"2025-06-18T15:25:30","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T15:25:30","slug":"when-humans-learned-to-live-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29869","title":{"rendered":"When Humans Learned to Live Everywhere"},"content":{"rendered":"
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About 70,000 years ago in Africa, humans expanded into more extreme environments, a new study finds, setting the stage for our global migration.<\/p>\n

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Geography is one of the things that sets apart modern humans.<\/p>\n

Our closest living relatives \u2014 chimpanzees and bonobos \u2014 are confined to a belt of Central African forests. But humans have spread across every continent, even remote islands. Our species can thrive not only in forests, but in grasslands, swamps, deserts and just about every other ecosystem dry land has to offer.<\/p>\n

In a study<\/a> published on Wednesday, scientists pinpoint the origin of our extraordinary adaptability: Africa, about 70,000 years ago.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when modern humans learned to thrive in more extreme habitats. We\u2019ve been expanding our range ever since. The finding could help resolve a paradox that has puzzled researchers for years.<\/p>\n

Our species arose in Africa about a million years ago<\/a> and then departed the continent a number of times<\/a> over the past few hundred thousand years. But those migrants eventually disappeared, with no descendants.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Finally, about 50,000 years ago<\/a>, one last wave spread out of Africa. All non-Africans can trace their ancestry to this last migration. The new study might explain why the final expansion was so successful.<\/p>\n

In the new study, Eleanor Scerri, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany, and her colleagues sought to understand what sort of habitats early humans lived in across Africa.<\/p>\n

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About 70,000 years ago in Africa, humans expanded into more extreme environments, a new study finds, setting the stage for our global migration.Geography is one of the things that sets apart modern humans.Our closest living relatives \u2014 chimpanzees and bonobos \u2014 are confined to a belt of Central African forests. But humans have spread across every continent, even remote islands. Our species can thrive not only in forests, but in grasslands, swamps, deserts and just about every other ecosystem dry land has to offer.In a study published on Wednesday, scientists pinpoint the origin of our extraordinary adaptability: Africa, about 70,000 years ago.That\u2019s when modern humans learned to thrive in more extreme habitats. We\u2019ve been expanding our range ever since. The finding could help resolve a paradox that has puzzled researchers for years.Our species arose in Africa about a million years ago and then departed the continent a number of times over the past few hundred thousand years. But those migrants eventually disappeared, with no descendants.Finally, about 50,000 years ago, one last wave spread out of Africa. All non-Africans can trace their ancestry to this last migration. The new study might explain why the final expansion was so successful.In the new study, Eleanor Scerri, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany, and her colleagues sought to understand what sort of habitats early humans lived in across Africa.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29871,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29869"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29872,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29869\/revisions\/29872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}