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→Migration From Africa
Cro-Magnon are generally considered the first anatomically modern humans in Europe at about 50,000 years ago. Already nearly 1 million years ago, the earliest <i>Homo</i> species had migrated to Europe, likely via Eurasia. As modern humans expanded in Europe and Asia, they increasingly came across Neanderthals. At this point, humans were most likely competing with Neanderthals for resources and food. At times, the two species were similar enough to breed, which has resulted in some genetic makeup of modern humans have Neanderthals DNA (some populations range in having 1% to 4% influence in DNA from Neanderthals), but this seems to have been relatively limited. By 20,000 years ago, Neanderthals had disappeared.<ref>For more on migration into Eurasia, see: Semino, O. (2000) The Genetic Legacy of Paleolithic Homo sapiens sapiens in Extant Europeans: A Y Chromosome Perspective. <i>Science</i> [Online] 290 (5494), 1155–1159. Available from: doi:10.1126/science.290.5494.1155.</ref>
In east Asia, east Siberia, Korea, and Japan may have been reached by 35,000 years ago by modern humans. This population that migrated to this region also led to a sub-population that became the first colonizers of the Americas. It is not clear when, but between 40,000-16,500 years ago, modern human migrated over the Beringia land bridge, likely using the ice sheets that formed in the late glacial maximum period when ice sheets and glaciers covered many parts of North America. Recent genetic work has shown that human populations in the Amazon are genetically similar to Australoid populations, or populations that also migrated to east Asia and Australia. In effect, human migrations to the Americas likely traveled along the coastal regions between North and South America.<ref>For more on migrations in east Asia, see: Su, B., Xiao, J., Underhill, P., Deka, R., et al. (1999) Y-Chromosome Evidence for a Northward Migration of Modern Humans into Eastern Asia during the Last Ice Age. <i>The American Journal of Human Genetics.</i> [Online] 65 (6), 1718–1724.; for migrations in the Americas, see: Hey, J. (2005) On the Number of New World Founders: A Population Genetic Portrait of the Peopling of the Americas Andy G. Clark (ed.). <i>PLoS Biology.</i> [Online] 3 (6), e193. Available from: doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030193.</ref>
[[File:Spreading homo sapiens la.svg.png|thumbnail|Figure 1. Proposed migration patterns out of Africa for modern humans.]]
