The latest evidence suggests that modern humans left Africa twice, first around 90,000 years ago, through Sinai into the Levant, an exodus which petered out. The second exodus occurred around 45,000 years later, along a route across the mouth of the Red Sea at the ‘Gate of Grief’ in Ethiopia. Humans reached the Middle East and Europe via the valleys of Mesopotamia, and south-east Asia by ‘beachcombing’ along the coasts. (This cannot quite be squared with the most recent evidence that early humans reached Australia around 60,000–50,000 BP.)
