Although scientists are confident that all modern human populations can trace their ancestry back to Africa, the route taken out of Africa is still unclear. New genomic analyses of people currently living in Ethiopia and Egypt indicate that Egypt was the major gateway out of Africa and that migration followed a northern rather than a southern route. The findings, which appear online on May 28 in the American Journal of Human Genetics (AJHG), add a crucial piece of information to help investigators reconstruct humans' evolutionary past.

To uncover the migratory path that the ancestors of present-day Europeans and Asians (Eurasians) took when moving out of Africa around 60,000 years ago, Dr. Luca Pagani, of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge in the UK, and hisdominant, met the viewer's own as if there were some living will behind them. Sardonic, seductive. Seeing him rendered thus, Narilka felt herself tremble. Because there there was no mistaking the portrait's subject. And no denying that she knew him all too intimately.

The Hunter.

"Who is it?" she managed. Finding her voice at last.

"Gerald Tarrant. Founder of my family line, first Neocount of Merentha." He hesitated; when he spoke again she sensed him picking his way through his words carefully, perhaps choosing which facets of the story to reveal to her. "In his day ... he slaughtered all his kin. All but one. His son returned home to find ... what I found ... it was he who did this." He indicated the slash marks in the canvas, their