Scientists from the United Kingdom have revealed in a genetic study performed on 6,000 skulls from ancient males humans who were located from around the around the world, that the origin of mankind as we know it, began in southeastern Africa, or what scientists refer to as "The Cradle of Life."

"We have combined our genetic data with new measurements of a large sample of skulls to show definitively that modern humans originated from a single area in Sub-Saharan Africa," said one of the researchers at the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England, Andrea Manica.

Skulls vary in size and shape as humans began to spread out from the African continent, and compared those marks to those of later humans along with their DNA.
Manica says that this does not confirm suspicions that humans eventually bread with Neanderthals, but that "whatever the product of that mating was, it didn't breed back into the population."

Some scientists disagree with the study, and call the report "mistaken."

"You can’t find the origin of people by measuring the variability of their skulls. The main problem with the paper is that it takes some assumptions from genetics papers of 10 to 15 years ago that we now know are wrong. Africa is ecologically diverse, and cranial variation is a function of environments. The most important feature that is related to climate is skull size. So by correcting for climate, they are subtracting a major component of variability," said researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, John Hawks.

The oldest skull believed to have been tested was at least 40,000 years old.