Africans’ genes mute on human birthplace

DNA studies fail to locate root of the species

The origin story for Homo sapiens is a messy tale. Rather than emerging from one small population, the human species likely evolved from a dispersed, complex network of groups that mixed and mated with each other, scientists report online September 20 in Science.

The new research is one of the largest genetic studies of southern Africa’s click-speaking hunter-gatherers known as the Khoisan.