This is the third post in my series on the possible routes taken by hominins in their Out Of Africa (OOA), or into Africa in back migrations over the course of the past 2 million years.
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
Sinai, the northern route across the Red Sea
Africa is really a vast peninsula of Eurasia, linked by a narrow strip of land that runs between the northern tip of the Gulf of Suez and the Mediterranean Sea. This stretch of desert is roughly 120 km long (76 miles). Since 1869, the Suez Canal runs across this isthmus.
On the eastern side of the isthmus lies in Asia, and is known as Sinai Peninsula, with an area of 62,000 km2 (24,000 sq.mi.), jutting into the Red Sea, which surrounds it with two narrow and long gulfs, the Gulf of Suez to the west, and the Gulf of Aqaba to the east. The land connection with the rest of Asia runs along the Egyptian border with Israel.
This area marked by the confluence of different tectonic plates that are splitting the crust of the earth. The rift started to form around 28 million years ago and is still widening by 0.25 to 0.5 mm (1/100 to 1/50 inch) per year. The eastern side is also being uplifted. (Fernández-Blanco, 2025).
Africa lies to the west of the isthums. This region is part of Egypt, and the fan shaped Nile Delta (named for the Greek letter "d" = δ) is adjacent to the Asian-African border.
The delta is a fertile, humid haven in the middle of a vast arid region. The River Nile, flows into the Mediterranean here along two main branches (Rosetta and Damietta), at one time the delta had several addutuibak brabcges and they fanned out further west and east than the present delta. However, the tectonic movement of the Sinai Plate uplifted the eastern edge, causing the easternmost river channel, the Pelusiac River, to silt up, and dry out around 2800 years ago (Stanley, 2008). You can see the site of the former city of Pelusium in Google maps located 21 km, 13 mi. east of the Suez Canal (See Sneh, 1973).
This corridor is the only dry, solid ground, route out of Africa. It did not require crossing any seas, navigating or island-hopping. It was used by animals moving to and fro the Levant. The only complication is that the Sinai is an arid, rugged territory with no permanent rivers or lakes. Rainfall is scarce (120 to 200 mm - 5 to 8 inches per year). This lack of water and desertic conditions are an obstacle. But, it wasn't always like it is now.
The Green & Wet periods
I will follow Breeze, 2016 who has identified several humid periods over the past 250 thousand years that could have favored the migration of human beings across this parched territory and allowed them to cross from the Nile delta to the valley of the Jordan River, and from there, into Western Eurasia. These periods are the following:
- MIS 7. 243 to 191 ka (thousand years) ago. A humid period in NE Africa, Arabia, and the Middle East. The Nile carried plenty of water. Which "raises the possibility of dispersals out of Africa."
- MIS 6. 191 to 130 ka. Continued humidity and from 180 to 170 ka, wet climate in NE Africa and the Levant. Sea levels were lower, allowing for alternate, shorter routes that are now submerged. From 178 to 152 ka, the areas of Jerusalem Dead Sea, all the way to the north of Levant were humid and much wetter, and cooler than nowadays.
- MIS 5e and transition from MIS 6 to 5e (137 to 114 ka). There was a well watered route along the current Nefud desert along the Tabuk Corridor (from Levant, across Arabia towards the Persian Gulf).
- MIS 5a (85-71 ka). A revived damp Tabuk-Nafhyd corridor, a greater flow on the Nile and a slightly humid Sahara.
This brief summary shows that there were plenty of windows between 243 to 71 ka for humans to cross the Sinai and surrounding deserts. This also ocurred many times since our homo ancestors appeared.
The different geography of those days also involved exposed continental shelves along the Mediterranean, a Nile River that flowed further east (Pelusic Branch or similar paleo-branches). Higher rainfall would have formed, along the coastal areas, rivers and streams running into the sea. Breeze notes that this route was used by the hippopotamus "to disperse from Africa to the Levant at the end of the last glacial."
Over the past ten thousand years, as the Egyptian and other cultures appeared in the region, the Sinai ecosystem was altered by human activity. Trees were felled, plant coverage was lost, the topsoil washed away, this led to fewer plants, less rain, and a vicious circle of desertification.
Neanderthals and Erectus in the Levant
Before modern humans, what is now Israel was the home of Homo erectus, and Neanderthals. Goren-Inbar, 2000 summarizes this as follows: There is evidence of Early Pleistocene populations 1.4 million years ago at ‘Ubeidiya with typical Acheulean erectus tools. A more recent site is Evron Quarry (1 million years).
More recently, and with another cultural setting is the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov (or GBY) site (780 ka) which the authors link to "yet another human movement out of Africa." Interestingly the stone tools from this site are not found in similar aged sites across Eurasia, only later did they appear across the continent.
Fire has been recorded at this site too 790 kya (Goren-Inbar, 2004). But who lit them is not known "The producers of the Acheulian material culture have frequently been assumed to be Homo erectus or Homo ergaster; at GBY they may just as well have been archaic Homo sapiens." This closing comment is relevant, because our species, H. sapiens is said to have appared 300 kya. If they are humans, this date is further back than accepted, even older than the split of Neanderthals and Denisovans, and that of humans and the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Homo ergaster is a "sister" species, a variety of African erectus.
The facts are that there are 1.8 million-year-old tools and fossils in Asia of erectus origin (see Yunxian, China), very ancient fossils at Dmanisi, Georgia and even older tools, at Zarqa in Jordania (2.4 My), and Masol, India (2.6 My) probably made by an earlier homo species. This suggests that the movement of hominins out of, and into Africa is ancient, and also, that the obvious route from Africa to Jordania and the Caucasus is through Sinai.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©
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