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Among Many Peoples, Little Genomic Variety
from the Washington Post
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There is a simplicity and all-inclusiveness
to the number three -- the triangle, the Holy
Trinity, three peas in a pod. So it's perhaps
not surprising that the Family of Man is
divided that way, too.
All of Earth's people, according to a new
analysis of the genomes of 53 populations,
fall into just three genetic groups. They are
the products of the first and most important
journey our species made -- the walk out of
Africa about 70,000 years ago by a small
fraction of ancestral Homo
sapiens.
One group is the African. It contains the
descendants of the original humans who emerged
in East Africa about 200,000 years ago. The
second is the Eurasian, encompassing the
natives of Europe, the Middle East and
Southwest Asia (east to about Pakistan). The
third is the East Asian, the inhabitants of
Asia, Japan and Southeast Asia, and -- thanks
to the Bering Land Bridge and island-hopping
in the South Pacific -- of the Americas and
Oceania as well.
Read more...
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