Last year, four big studies examined our ancestral history. These have provided huge amounts of data that can be analysed with the new model.
The Simons Genome Diversity Project study
After analysing DNA from 142 populations around the world, the researchers conclude that all modern humans living today can trace their ancestry back to a single group that emerged in Africa 200,000 years ago.
They also found that all non-Africans appear to be descended from a single group that split from the ancestors of African hunter gatherers around 130,000 years ago.
The study also shows how humans appear to have formed isolated groups within Africa with populations on the continent separating from each other.
The KhoeSan in south Africa for example separated from the Yoruba in Nigeria around 87,000 years ago while the Mbuti split from the Yoruba 56,000 years ago.
The Estonian Biocentre Human Genome Diversity Panel study
This examined 483 genomes from 148 populations around the world to examine the expansion of Homo sapiens out of Africa.
They found that indigenous populations in modern Papua New Guinea owe two percent of their genomes to a now extinct group of Homo sapiens.
This suggests there was a distinct wave of human migration out of Africa around 120,000 years ago.
The Aboriginal Australian study
Using genomes from 83 Aboriginal Australians and 25 Papuans from New Guinea, this study examined the genetic origins of these early Pacific populations.
These groups are thought to have descended from some of the first humans to have left Africa and has raised questions about whether their ancestors were from an earlier wave of migration than the rest of Eurasia.
The new study found that the ancestors of modern Aboriginal Australians and Papuans split from Europeans and Asians around 58,000 years ago following a single migration out of Africa.
These two populations themselves later diverged around 37,000 years ago, long before the physical separation of Australia and New Guinea some 10,000 years ago.
The Climate Modelling study
Researchers from the University of Hawaii at M?noa used one of the first integrated climate-human migration computer models to re-create the spread of Homo sapiens over the past 125,000 years.
The model simulates ice-ages, abrupt climate change and captures the arrival times of Homo sapiens in the Eastern Mediterranean, Arabian Peninsula, Southern China, and Australia in close agreement with paleoclimate reconstructions and fossil and archaeological evidence.
The found that it appears modern humans first left Africa 100,000 years ago in a series of slow-paced migration waves.
They estimate that Homo sapiens first arrived in southern Europe around 80,000-90,000 years ago, far earlier than previously believed.
The results challenge traditional models that suggest there was a single exodus out of Africa around 60,000 years ago.