Sonia Shah

No, there were already other humans there, Neanderthals, others.

And we intermingled with them, too.

A lot of people today still have Neanderthal genes because that's what we do as humans.

We mix.

So migration has been complicated from the very beginning.

We now know from paleogenetics that...

You know, people walked out of Africa, came into North America, and then they didn't just stay there.

They went back to Asia.

They went back to Europe.

They went back to Africa.

They came out again.

You know, it's been this complex story from the very beginning.

And so I think what we're seeing is just it's going to continue because that's just how it has been.

We have new drivers today because of climate change.

So like I said, I think that's going to change directionality to some extent.

But

I think the idea that, well, there was this idea we all grew up with in my generation that we kind of walked out of Africa and then we populated the planet and then we just stayed still for thousands and thousands of years until sort of modern travel made it easy to move around like airplanes and ships and stuff.

But what we now know is that we didn't need any of that.

We were moving all along and we have evidence of that in our bodies, in our DNA.

We all carry that around with us.