That missing DNA was closely related to that of modern Sardinians, and a prehistoric farmer that lived in Germany.  That had been hinted in some Africans living today, but the discovery of the Mota sample will help researchers establish at what point the farmer’s signature arrived in Africa.

Population geneticist Andrea Manica and graduate student Marcos Gallego Llorente at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, who analyzed the sequence, suggest the migrating farmers and the Africans both got this DNA from the same source, likely a population living in the Middle East.  They believe this population began to migrate to Europe and Asia about 8,000 years ago, but other descendants continued on to Africa, probably after the time that Mota lived.

Migrations to and from Africa likely continued for thousands of years, and studies like this one are just the beginning of what scientists hope to one day understand.