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Earth

Climate change drove humans out of Africa

By Kate Ravilious

5 September 2007

WE MIGHT have something to thank major climate change for after all – though only when it occurred in the distant past. It could explain why early humans learned to walk around 3 million years ago, and why our ancestors started to migrate out of Africa around 70,000 years ago.

Royhan Gani from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and colleagues combined geological data from the ground with radar data from space to create a detailed three-dimensional map of the . Regular volcanic eruptions over the past 30 million years have left numerous lava…

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