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Origin of our species: Why humans were once so much more diverse
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Imagine visiting a tourist attraction in any major world city. There are people from all over – a Nigerian family, a Chinese couple, a German school party, and more. They all look very different from one another, which isn’t surprising given that their ancestors have lived in far-flung parts of the world for generations. Yet, everyone alive today can trace their origins back to Africa, so there must have been a time when such physical differences didn’t exist, right? Actually, no.

In fact, if you were to travel back to the very beginnings of our species and select a random group of humans, they would look unlike anyone living today in Africa or elsewhere. What’s more, they would show extraordinary physical variation – greatly exceeding that in modern human populations. Far from becoming more diverse as we have adapted to life in different parts of the planet, Homo sapiens is more homogeneous today than our ancestors were.