The Real Eve Page #3

This is no single trudge

across the sandbanks.

This was an epic struggle

to stay alive...

not just for themselves,

but the rest of mankind.

Those who survived the crossing,

who didn't succumb...

to the dangers of the Gates of

Grief, came to a virgin land.

This is the new frontier in the

beginning of the rest of the world.

Yemen beaches were on the edge

of an almost empty world.

0ur group were the

first modern humans...

the first of their kind

outside Africa...

surviving in this place

at that time.

This group was on their own

at the edge of the new world.

Life would have been a bit better for

our migrants across into the Yemen.

For starts, the beach combing

in the Gulf of Aden...

would have been a lot better

than on the Red Sea.

Unlike the parched,

salty beaches they had left...

the Yemen was green and fertile,

full of fresh water...

game and shady oasis,

safe haven for a family to settle.

They were probably a small group.

Maybe, maximum about 250 persons.

They would have been scattered

around in family units...

of five to 20, but networking with

the other groups in the population.

Anything less than about 200

would not have been viable.

They wouldn't have been able to cope

with epidemics of disease or famine.

We know Eve and her daughters

were among the survivors...

because from them are descended

everyone in the world outside Africa.

The new science of tracking

is a breakthrough.

Using the single unbroken

mitochondrial genetic line...

cientists constructed

a vast family tree.

Pinpointing the markers,

fixing them by time and place.

It shows that once outside of

Africa, our ancestors split up.

Some going north and west,

some going east and south.

Once they had left Africa

and the Yemen...

they went their separate ways,

never to meet again.

When they first arrived here, they'd

have a selection of African lines.

A group of 250 people may have had

at least 5 or 6 different lines.

But over a thousand years...

if this population

stayed isolated...

gradually, those lines would

have reduced and reduced.

The total number of the population

would have stayed the same.

It's rather like a Welsh hill

village, or a village in Italy.

After some generations, everybody

gets to have the same surname.

This process of reduction

of lines is called drift...

and it happens in all small,

isolated communities.

The smaller and more

isolated a group is...

the faster the mitochondrial

DNA line comes down to one.

Not to one person,

or even to one group...

but one mitochondrial DNA line.

Some women have no daughters.

Some daughters don't survive.

So, in the end,

only one line is left.

Totally isolated, they can breed

only amongst themselves.

The genetic map shows it would

take about a thousand years...

for the mitochondrial line

to be reduced to one.

One genetic lineage shared

by all non-African people...

everywhere throughout history.

The single line convinces Oppenheimer

he is right about our ancestry.

The implications of the single

exodus from Africa are enormous.

For starts, there's a simple

observation that Australians...

New Guineans, Southeast Asians,

Chinese, Native Americans...

Europeans and Indians all come

from the same small group.

That means that this small group

in the last 80,000 years...

has diversified into complete

physically different populations...

in different parts of the world that

adapted physically and culturally...

to the new environments that

they've found and explored.

Through the Gulf of Aden out of

Africa families stayed put...

waiting until the climate changes

allowed them to move.

Their descendents would be

the people of the Middle East...

spreading north into Europe

40,000 years later...

and founding the vibrant,

cosmopolitan cities we know today.

Others will continue past the gulf,

moving east...

beachcombing their way along

the coast of the Indian Ocean...

Iooking for warm

and gentle places to stop.

Within 6,000 years

of reaching the Yemen beaches...

our ancestors would

eat their way to Malaysia.

6,000 miles from Africa, our family

are in the tropical rain forests...

of Southeast Asia. These are

the descendants of Eve...

hunting in the jungles of Malaya,

roaming in small bands...

staying in one place long enough to

reap the harvest of wildlife...

and then moving on.

Their bodies are beginning to

adapt to the rainforest conditions.

Away from the harsh African sun

their skins become lighter...

their stature reduced

by lack of meat.

Like hunter-gatherers

in the jungle today...

they live on fish, rats,

squirrels and lizards.

On canopy game, fruits and roots.

They camouflage themselves

to conform to the foliage...

and imitate animal calls

to deceive their quarry.

Life in the forest is shared with

venomous snakes, cobras...

pythons and predatory animals.

Between leaving Africa

and arriving in Australia...

there's no clear archeological evidence

of the presence of modern humans...

or their amazing migration.

No skulls, no skeletons or graves.

Sea levels were 160 feet lower.

So, whatever our family left behind...

on their coastal journeys

have been reclaimed by the sea.

The genetic trail

is all we have.

It's not until we reach Malaysia that

new evidence begins to fill the gaps.

The great Toba eruption

in Sumatra, 74,000 years ago...

was the single biggest explosion

in the last two million years.

The plume was 25 miles high

and plunged much of the world...

into six dark years

of volcanic winter.

Northern Malaysia, India

and the Middle East...

were covered in a deadly shroud

of thick volcanic ash.

The most destructive event

in the last 2 million years...

provides positive clues about

our family's journey.

These are the Semang people,

shy hunter-gatherers...

of the interior jungles

in the lake peninsula.

Much darker than the other

Malaysians around them...

they are part of

the Orang Asli group.

Steven Oppenheimer thinks

they could be surviving remnant...

of our out of Africa family that

came through here 74,000 years ago.

If our ancestors

had passed this way...

on their route from Africa

to Australia and New Guinea...

it's likely they would

have left a genetic trace.

And we know, from previous surveys,

that the 0rang Asli...

as a group of tribes in the

Malay peninsula of Malaysia...

are among the oldest

people in this region.

And the Semang are probably

the oldest of all.

Steven Oppenheimer has come

to this remote Semang village...

to collect swab samples of DNA.

These, he hopes,

will confirm his idea.

If my theory is correct, that they

left Africa 80,000 years ago...

they'd have had to have traveled

6,000 miles in 6,000 years...

in order to be here at the time

of the Great Toba explosion.

That means about a mile a year,

which is entirely feasible...

for that sort of nomadic lifestyle

of moving down the coast.

But to determine whether or not

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