The findings are based on genomic datasets extracted from ancient DNA and a collection of modern genes, combined with paleoecological evidence showing that this region represented an ideal habitat. Researchers call this region — part of what is known as the Persian Plateau — a “hub” for these people, perhaps just thousands, before they moved on, millennia later, to more distant locations.
“Our results show the first complete picture of the whereabouts of the ancestors of all modern-day non-Africans in the early phases of Eurasian colonization,” said molecular anthropologist Luca Pagani of the University of Padova in Italy, senior author of the study. published in the journal Nature Communications.
Anthropologist and study co-author Michael Petraglia, director of the Australian Research Center for Human Evolution at Griffith University, said the study “is a story about us and our history — our aim was to unlock some of the mysteries about our evolution and worldwide dispersion”.
These people lived in small nomadic hunter-gatherer bands, according to the researchers. The pole’s location offered a variety of ecological environments, from forests to grasslands and savannas, fluctuating over time between arid and humid intervals.
The hypothesis is that there were plenty of resources available, and there is evidence of hunting of wild gazelles, sheep and goats, according to Petraglia.
“Their diet would have been composed of edible plants and small to large game. Hunter-gatherer groups appear to have practiced a seasonal lifestyle, living in the lowlands in the colder months and in mountainous regions in the warmer months,” Petraglia said.
