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Science 13 May 2005:
Vol. 308. no. 5724, pp. 965 - 966
DOI: 10.1126/science.1113261
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Perspectives

Also see the archival list of Science's Compass: Enhanced Perspectives

EVOLUTION:
Enhanced: Did Early Humans Go North or South?

Peter Forster and Shuichi Matsumura

When the first early humans ventured out of Africa, which way did they go? Studies of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA are revealing the excursion choices of our earliest ancestors. In their Perspective, Forster and Matsumura discuss two new studies of the mitochondrial DNA of the indigenous peoples of Malaysia and the Andaman islands (Macaulay et al., Thangaraj et al.). These studies suggest that the earliest humans took a southern route along the coastline of the Indian Ocean before fanning out over the rest of the world.

The authors are at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, UK. E-mail: pf223{at}cam.ac.uk

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