The thread title is obviously spawned by Amos' more restricted thread title about physicists. I always like to read new entries in that thread so I thought I might follow that idea just with a broader title.

Franck Prugnolle et al., Geography predicts neutral genetic diversity of human populations, Current Biology, Vol 15, 2005, R159 - R160

Online version (maybe not accessible for most so I copy the summary and the start of the article)

A leading theory for the origin of modern humans, the ‘recent African origin’ (RAO) model, postulates that the ancestors of all modern humans originated in East Africa and that, around 100,000 years ago, some modern humans left the African continent and subsequently colonised the entire world, displacing previously established human species such as Neanderthals in Europe. This scenario is supported by the observation that human populations from Africa are genetically the most diverse and that the genetic diversity of non-African populations is negatively correlated with their genetic differentiation towards populations from Africa.

Here we add further compelling evidence supporting the RAO model by showing that geographic distance – not genetic distance as in – from East Africa along likely colonisation routes is an excellent predictor for genetic diversity of human populations (R2=85%). Our results point to a history of colonisation of the world characterised by a very large number of small bottlenecks and limited subsequent gene flow.

Wolfgang