DNA supports Stone Age back-to-Africa migration

Scientists say they have extracted ancient DNA from the skull of a man buried in the highlands of Ethiopia 4,500 years ago that supports the theory that Eurasian farmers migrated to Africa some 3,000 years ago.

This Stone Age resettlement had previously been theorized, but the rare find allowed scientists to see what DNA looked like well before the time the migration would have taken place. A comparison with modern populations around the world allowed them to see that the migrants left their genetic mark in the farthest corners of Africa.

"This is the first ancient human genome found in Africa to have been sequenced," said Marcos Gallego Llorente, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge in the UK and a member of the international team of researchers whose findings were published on Thursday in the journal Science.