The last of the corridors that could have been used by hominins and modern humans to exit Africa (or to enter that continent from Wester Eurasia), located on the southern tip of the Red Sea at a strait known as Bab-el-Mandeb.
Post 1: Where was the Out of Africa Corridor?
Post 2: OOA Routes: Gibraltar
Post 3: OOA Routes: Strait of Sicily
Post 4: OOA Routes: Sinai
Post 5: OOA Routes: Bab-el-Mandeb
Bab-el-Mandeb, the southern route across the Red Sea
These straits formed when the continental crust rifted 30 to 25 million years ago, breaking up Africa from Arabia (in Asia) and creating a gap that was flooded, creating the Red Sea.
The southwestern tip of Arabia, located in Yemen (a conflictive and war-torn region nowadays) is located on the eastern side of the strait, while Eritrea and Djibouti are located on the Horn of Africa side of the strait. Southeast, in the Indian Ocean, is the Gulf of Aden.
Close to the Asian coast is Perim Island (just 2.5 km - 1.6 mi. away), then there is a main channel 21 km - 13 mi wide.
To the south, there is a small group of islands, Sawabi Islands, the "Seven brothers", very close to the African coast. From high ground, you can see across the Strait.
For those who support the Out Of Africa theory, this is an ideal corridor, located close the the main fossil sites of Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia, along the Rift Valley. Humans didn't have to go far to reach the sea and cross it into Asia, to colonize it.
The Crossing
Unlike the dry route through Sinai, this one requires crossing deep water. Rafts, or watercraft were necessary, like they would have been needed to cross Gibraltar or the Tunisian-Sicilian straits.
Flemming, 2003 discusses the corridors out of Africa, and points out that the contemporary continental shelf located 20 to 30 m (60-90 ft.) below modern sea levels does not cross the strait. It would have required a sea crossing to bridge the 5 km wide gap (3.1 miles) caused by the deep cut linking the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea during Glacial Maximum periods. This was a gash with a depth of around 140 to 170 m (460-560 ft.)
López, et al., 2016 discussing the Out of Africa event mention this option as the "Southern Route" across the Red Sea, offering some arguments in favor of its use. Similar arguments are used in another paper by Oppenheimer, 2012, who suggests that, of all the potential routes leading out of Africa, this one was the most favorable for modern humans. The reason is based on genetics.
Oppenheimer points out that mtDNA haplogroup L3, expanded out of Africa around 60 to 70,000 years ago, branching into haplogroups M and N shortly after. These two are found in Eastern and Southern Asia (a region which has the highest amount of variant M and N lineages in the whole world). The Levant and Europe have N variants that are younger than those found in East and South Asia, they also have less diversity. This suggests that humans carrying L3 crossed Bab-el-Mandeb and first moved across southern Arabia (Yemen, Oman), the Persian Gulf, and dispersed east into Southern and Eastern Asia, diverging into M and N on the way. Only later did the N haplogroup head into Western Eurasia.
Further evidence is archaeological, which indicates an early peopling of the Philippines and Papua-Australia earlier than the peopling of Europe.
There is evidence of Homo erectus tools at the Saffaqah site in Saudi Arabia, some 350 km (200 mi) west of Riyadh (see Google map), the site is roughly equidistant from Bab-el-Mandeb and Sinai, so erectus, if originating in Africa, could have used either, or both. Or maybe originated in Asia, and used neither.
Saffaqah Acheulean tools are not that old. They were dated to around 200,000 years ago. They are well described by Shipton, 2018, and correspond to a very humid period in the now extremely arid Saudi deserts. At that time several rivers (Wadi) flowed into both Red Sea and Persian Gulf, creating migration routes and providing water (and prey living along them) for hominins.
An earlier, but northern site is the one located at Ti’s al Ghadah in Saudi Arabia, 300,000 to 500,000 years old. Stone tools and bones with cut marks were found at this site, which at that time was set in a more humid savannah-grassland environment (Roberts, 2018). The authors point out that "The identification of Afrotropical, Saharo-Arabian and Palaearctic fauna in association with hominin presence also highlights the possibility of middle, and perhaps also early, Pleistocene hominin migrations into the Arabian Peninsula from Africa and Eurasia" indicating that Arabia was a two-way corridor, blending pot of Africa and Asia.
Groucutt et al., 2018 describe the oldest modern human fossils outside of the Levant and Africa. They were found at Al Wusta, Saudi Arabia, (approx. location in Google Maps) and are 95,000 to 85,000 years old (older than the generally accepted date for the OOA event). Again, this is closer to Sinai than to Bab-el-Mandeb. The authors point out that "Al Wusta shows that early dispersals were more spatially and temporally extensive than previously thought. Early H. sapiens dispersals out of Africa were not limited to winter rainfall-fed Levantine Mediterranean woodlands immediately adjacent to Africa, but extended deep into the semi-arid grasslands of Arabia, facilitated by periods of enhanced monsoonal rainfall" Indeed, the Arabian Peninsula played a role in the hominin exchange between Eurasia and Africa.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall ©
