less than 50 people founded the entire population of Europe, according to a new and accurate way of reading history from the human genome. Scientists previously believed that the 500 million people living in Europe today are ancestors of about 10,000 people who left Africa around 100,000 years ago.

Scientists at the Whitehead Institute at Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( mit ), usa, believe all Europeans probably descended from fewer than about 50 people who interbred together over about 30 generations. This select group may have left Africa about 60,000 years ago. They have found genetic evidence of inbreeding.

With the availability of a dense genome-wide map of single nucleotide polymorphisms ( snp s), a central issue in human genetics has become whether it is now possible to use linkage disequilibrium ( ld ) to map genes that cause disease. ld refers to correlations among neighbouring alleles, reflecting