Migration Out of Africa

The migration out of Africa before colonization may be the most important migration of all human history - historians, archaelogists, and other experts believe that East Africa was the home to our earliest human ancestors. Other medical researchers agree that maybe 150,00 to 100,000 ago, and some believe even up to one million years ago, modern humans started to emerge from Africa, and some studies that compare genetics have found chromosomal variations that can link all humans back to Africa origins.

Africa is the most genetically diverse continent in the world, which further supports theories that Africa is, in fact, everyone's homeland. Whether due to shortage of land, climate, or tribal governments and conflicts, the groups of people living in East Africa started to move into areas of Western Asia.

Migration was further influenced by climate change, trade, the spread of the Islam and Christian religions, and many other factors. The AfricAvenir site has an excellent chronology of Ancient African civilizations, which tracks the developments of ancient kingdoms, people groups, and movements, including the Bantu Migration.

While not exactly a migration out of Africa, the Bantu Migration is still worth noting because of it's origins in the Central African area, and the vast movement, perhaps the largest ever, of the Bantu-speaking people of Africa from Central Africa to South Africa. Look at the above map and realize a single language group spread throughout and ultimately populated half of Africa. Compare that to the five hundred years it took Europeans to spread throughout North America, or the few thousand years it took the Romans and the Greeks to spread to Europe, and you will realize that this group of people could share the same ancestors that we all do- the earliest humans from East Africa.