The first departure from Africa
Hominins leave the continent for the first time and reach the Caucasus within a few hundred thousand years.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 200 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 100 thousand years
- Era
- Early Pleistocene, Quaternary
Sometime around 2 million years ago members of the genus Homo expand out of Africa — the first hominin dispersal beyond the continent, well over a million and a half years before our own species does the same. The push is probably not deliberate: an animal that eats meat needs a large range, and range expansion follows. Within a short time the descendants of that dispersal are in Georgia, China and Java, spanning climates from temperate woodland to tropical forest.