Modern genetics is revealing an ever-clearer picture of mankind's ancestral migration out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago.  This Scientific American article summarizes the science and the interesting conclusions of contemporary human evolutionary studies.

In addition to providing important details about our origins, these studies are changing our concepts of race. According to Pasteur Institute genetics researcher Lluis Quintana-Murci, “There is no race ... What we see [from the standpoint of genetics] is geographical gradients. There are no sharp differences between Europeans and Asians. From Ireland to Japan, there is no sharp boundary where something has changed completely.”