Before the exodus

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: species’s history have survived to the present day.

This suggests the early human population was tiny (so the opportunities for new matrilines to evolve in the first place were limited) and reinforces the idea that Homo sapiens may have come close to extinction (eliminating some matrilines that did previously exist). Indeed, there may, at one point, have been as few as 2,000 people left to carry humanity forward.

This shrinkage coincides with a period of prolonged drought in eastern Africa, and was probably caused by it. The end of the drought, however, was followed by the appearance of many new matrilines that survive to the present day. The researchers estimate that by 60,000-70,000 years ago, the period when the exodus that populated the rest of the world happened, as many as 40 such groups were flourishing in Africa—though that migration involved only two of these groups.

The African matrilines, however, seem to have remained isolated from each other for tens of millennia after the exodus. It was not until 40,000 years ago that they began to re-establish conjugal relations, possibly as a result of the technological revolution of the Late Stone Age, which yielded new and more finely crafted tools. Only the bushmen seem to have missed out on this panmictic party. They were left alone until a few hundred years ago, when their homelands were invaded from the north by other Africans and from the south by Europeans. Panmixis thus came full circle. And that particular party was certainly not a happy one.