Where did the first people come from? The case for a coastal migration from southern Africa

By Alan Whitfield, Emeritus Chief Scientist, NRF-SAIAB, National Research Foundation
Charles Helm, Research Associate, African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University
Francis Thackeray, Honorary Research Associate, Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand
Renee Rust, Research fellow, Department of Geography, Archaeology & Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand; Research Associate, African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University
Willo Stear, Research Associate, African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University

The origins and migrations of modern humans around the world are a hot topic of debate. Genetic analyses have pointed to Africa as the continent from which our ancestors dispersed in the Late Pleistocene epoch, which began about 126,000 years ago. Various dispersal routes have been suggested.

As a group of scientists who have been studying human evolution, we propose in a recently published…

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