Out Of Africa Research Paper

Human beings, like a lot of animals, get to where they are by migration. Which is the process of a species or part of a species moving from one place to another. Due to this, Humans are now a world dominating biped species. Early humans evolved to modern Homo Sapiens around 200,000 years ago, according to the Out of Africa theory.

The Out of Africa model is the widely accepted idea describing the origins of modern humans. It states the idea of early humans evolving in the Ethiopian area before leaving Africa and spreading to the other continents of the world. Human beings were very primitive back millions of years ago, compared to today. This migration took, well, hundreds of thousands of years to complete. Now, how did it happen?

For this

paper, the general term for early Homo Sapiens will be “human”. Humans were still evolving at the time of this migration, this generalization will allow the points made in this paper easier to understand. It can be reasoned that there were about six different species of human. We don’t know exactly what killed off the other five, sparing the Homo Sapiens. It is debated that other biped species interbred with Homo Sapiens, like Homo erectus and Neanderthal. This theory will be ignored for this paper to focus on the path that humans took to leave Africa.
The theory suggests that the earliest humans originated from the Ethiopian area and the African savanna. This was an area with food and water in moderately warm surroundings, perfect for the beginning of the human race.
Humans evolved from Neanderthal and Homo erectus over hundreds of thousands of years. The changing climate and environment forced them to change and evolve to suit their needs more effectively. If this place was so perfect, then why did they leave?
It wasn't perfect. In this environment, there are hostile predators, famine, disease, competition with other humans, aggression and even climate change. To avoid this, they left and went other places. Homo sapiens, like other animal species, moved to follow the food, escape rival human groups, and to take refuge from the cold of the coming Ice Age.
Humans left of natural causes. They were also not as intellectually evolved as Christopher Columbus or Cabeza De Vaca. Early humans were probably not as interested in the thrill of discovery as later humans. Fire was still quite intriguing to them. The same goes with, tools and clothes, they were still relatively new.
This migration happened gradually over hundreds of thousands of years, but the estimated time that scientists can agree could be the considered the beginning of the migration is around 200,000 years ago.

This was not the Oregon Trail, taking a just a couple of years. It must be understood that the human migration took a very long time, two ice ages came and went during the course of this painstakingly slow migration.

After leaving the Ethiopian area, people split off from there. Some humans went down south further into Africa and a lot went up northeast into Asia. It is debated whether or not early humans went up through Egypt or crossed the Red Sea at northern Ethiopia.

As stated earlier, fire was still relatively new, same goes with clothing. Modes of transportation were not advanced as far as technology goes. Walking, running, swimming and the occasional climb up a rock face was to be expected from primitive humans. Navigation with the stars hadn’t been used when the earliest humans migrated out of Africa. It’s most likely that they did not know where they were going and just followed the food and moved to warmer areas when it got cold, like many migrating animals.

It is safe to assume that this migration for the early humans was a precarious journey. Plenty of challenges posed a threat to humans. Some may include other hostile humans, harsh climates, possibly hazardous plants and animals, foreign terrain, and

disease.
It took a long time to leave Africa, even longer to go to Europe and transverse the islands to Australia, even more time to go across the Bering Strait to the Americas. Evolution helped the humans survive the changing climates. For example, humans in warmer climates often had curly hair, it exposing the neck and allow evaporation of sweat for body temperature control.
A while after the humans left Africa is when they began to develop distinguishable racial differences. People have been able to tell each other apart for thousands of years by race, even by what family they belong to. What caused some humans to have darker, brown skin, while others have lighter, white skin? It really depends on where they lived.
Lighter skin aids in UV ray penetration, helping the body produce vitamin D. This occurred for people living in parts of the world that doesn't get excessive sunlight. In places that do have a lot of sunlight, like the equator, darker skin protects the body from receiving too much UV rays. Too much UV rays can result in cancer and the destruction of important vitamins and minerals.
There are lots of adaptations humans have made to effectively survive in our changing world. This migration out of Africa proves that we humans are a hardy, adaptive species, capable of populating entire planets. To be a part of that is something to be proud of.