Out of Africa, But How?

An interesting hypothesis on the route man took out of Africa:

WASHINGTON Were our earliest ancestors beach lovers?

Two reports out this week indicate that the first humans who left Africa may have traveled along the coast of the Arabian peninsula.

That's contrary to what scientists used to think -- that our ancestors moved off of Africa through Egypt and the Middle East.

The studies were put together by researchers in Scotland and India.

How did researchers figure out travel plans from 65-thousand years ago?

They looked at codes in our D-N-A which show how long ago one group split from another.

There's also some more straightforward evidence. Researchers say Australia was settled thousands of years before Europe, pointing to an early migration east.

I find these theories endlessly fascinating, in part because they tend to become orthodoxy very quickly, then get overturned very quickly by the emerging new orthodoxy.

The bottom line is that our knowledge of the ancient world is very sketchy, and what we do know is based on a web of assumptions not fully consistent with one another nor totally verifiable.