In 1988 Newsweek broke the news that everyone alive on the planet today carries DNA that can be traced back to a single woman living in Africa over 150 000 years ago. Modern humans are truly out of Africa.
But how, when and why we left our motherland was open to question and until very recently most experts believed that many waves of ex-African migration had resulted in a gradual populating of the world. In a brilliant synthesis of new genetic, archaeological and climatic evidence, the author challenges the orthodoxy by arguing that all modern non-Africans can be shown to have sprung from a single successful exodus.
One migrant band of no more than a few hundred souls was forced out of its homeland by increasing salinity in the Red Sea, some 80 000 years ago, and all non-Africans today can trace their mitochondrial DNA to one woman from the group the Out-of-Africa eve.
This is the story of that remarkable group and its great global trek.