In epics from Homer's Odyssey to Star Trek, it's usually men who are boldly going where no man has gone before. In real life, though, human migration may be more of a woman thing.
In the October issue of Nature Genetics, Stanford's Eric Minch and Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Harvard's Mark T. Seielstad describe their analysis of genetic samples taken from 75 regions around the world. Turns out that variants of the Y chromosome, which is passed down by fathers, tend to be geographically concentrated. But variants of the mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from mothers, is dispersed throughout the world. The implication: men have tended to stay put throughout human evolution, while women have migrated large distances.
The evidence makes sense when you consider that in about 70 percent of the world's cultures, women leave the nest at marriage. In doing so, they've helped to keep the human gene pool nicely mixed. Now they might even get the credit.
