About 200,000 years ago, somewhere in southeastern Africa, modern humans evolved. The population rose and fell during periods of time possibly due to climate change, population pressure or even perhaps wanderlust and the desire to travel and discover the world. Small groups of humans wondered to new areas creating their own groups and more groups split off forming even more groups and so on. Africa has many types of environments such as deserts, costal regions, rivers/lakes and mountains; man of which requiring adaptations including behavioral, physical and cultural. Somewhere between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, modern man left Africa.

The people who today have the most diverse genetic structure in the world are the !Kung. Because of this finding, it is hypothesized that the !Kung are the descendants of the people who stayed in Africa and colonized the continent and, eventually, the rest of the world. Not only can we assume the !Kung are a relative to our ancestors by DNA, but we can also hypothesize this by their language. The Khoesan, Hadza, Sak, Sandawe and Pygmy have a language that is similar to the !Kung which includes a variety of “click-speaking”. The previously listed peoples all related with shared ancestors 35,000 years ago.

There are 4 theories of human population:

1) Isolation by distance:http://archaeology.about.com/od/earlymansites/ss/isolation.htm

2) Out of Africa: http://archaeology.about.com/od/oterms/g/outofafrica.htm

3) Multiregional Hypothesis: http://archaeology.about.com/cs/glossary/g/multiregional.htm

4) Southern Dispersal Rout: http://archaeology.about.com/od/sterms/qt/southern_disper.htm