Around 200,000 years ago, our archaic apelike ancestors evolved into modern humans: Homo Sapiens. This changed everything.

23andme

For thousands of years, our species stayed within the jungles of Africa. It was only 60,000 years ago when our ancestors slowly began migrating to Eurasia (or so we thought). This great migration is called the “Out of Africa Model” and it’s been the dominant evolutionary theory for the past 20 years.

23andme

And our previous research proved that most of us are descended from that one original group of Africans who left the jungles all those years ago.

New archeological evidence, however, pokes holes in the “Out of Africa” model, changing our views about our own evolutionary history.

It turns out, modern humans didn’t leave Africa 60,000 years ago. Archeologists in southern China found teeth belonging to modern humans that are at least 80,000-years-old, according to a new study in Nature.

This means that modern humans must have left Africa 20,000 years earlier than we originally thought.

Researchers say the teeth could even be as old as 120,000 years. If this is true, it would overturn everything we previously thought about our ancestry.

According to the study, modern humans didn’t populate Europe until around 45,000 years ago.

Our arrival in Europe coincided with the decline of the Neanderthals—our hominid extinct cousins.

The Neanderthals ruled Eurasia for hundreds of thousands of years until we started to populate their lands.

23andme

They disappeared from existence around 40,000 years ago. We’re not sure why or if it had anything to do with our migration.

a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>Main image by Adam Foster/CC by