Vast Eurasian Migration Back to Africa Revealed by Bones of 4,500-year-old Ethiopian Man

An ancient African genome has been sequenced for the first time ever with the discovery of a 4,500-year-old skeleton in a cave in Ethiopia. DNA recovered from the bones suggest that a vast migration of Middle Eastern people into Africa occurred thousands of years ago, reshaping the story of ancient human history.

Due to the fragile nature of human remains in hot climates, getting any kind of DNA from ancient African bodies has been difficult. However, Mota changed that. The ancient skeleton of a hunter-gatherer man who lived 4,500 years ago was found in 2012 in a cave in the highlands of southwestern Ethiopia. Named ‘Mota,’ after the cave, he had been buried in cool, arid conditions, and when scientists tested his petrous bone (found just below the ear) , they were able to retrieve DNA yields as much as 500 times that of other bones, reports NewScientist.