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The Explorer’s Gene review: Our drive for adventure and challenge has ancient origins

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New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

The drive to explore has taken humans to most of the habitable planet

Marco Bottigelli/Getty Images

The Explorer’s Gene
Alex Hutchinson (Mariner Books (UK, 10 April; US, on sale now))

Approximately 50,000 years ago, our ancestors – the first modern humans – set out from their African homeland in droves. We don’t know for sure what prompted this mass uprooting (sometimes known as “the Great Human Expansion”), but our species’ staggering geographic spread is proof of its success.

In relatively short order, humans made it to more or less “every habitable corner of the planet”, writes Alex Hutchinson, a journalist,…

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