Subject
Human migration
Human migration. The movement of human populations into territory they had not occupied, and the skeletal, lithic, and genetic evidence by which such movements are traced. Two dispersals are meant by the phrase and they are a world apart. Hominins first left Africa around two million years ago: stone tools on the Chinese Loess Plateau at Shangchen are dated to about 2.12 million years, and the oldest fossils outside Africa, at Dmanisi in Georgia, to roughly 1.85 million. The dispersal usually meant by the term is far later — anatomically modern humans out of Africa from about 60,000 years ago, reaching Sahul by 50,000 and the Americas last of all.