AGENCIES: Scientists claim they have traced the homeland for all modern humans to a region of northern Botswana, south of the Zambesi River.

The area is now salt pans, but 200,000 years ago it was home to Homo Sapiens and hosted a population of modern humans for at least 70,000 years, according to a  study released in the scientific journal Nature on Monday.

The group remained in the region until regional climate changes led them to migrate, roughly 130,000 years ago, first to the northeast then to the southwest.

“We’ve known for a long time that modern humans originated in Africa roughly 200,000 years ago,” Vanessa Hayes, from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the University of Sydney said.

“But what we hadn’t known until the study was where exactly this homeland was.”

The area identified in the study was called Makgadikgadi-Okavango, once home to an enormous lake, roughly twice the area of modern-day Lake Victoria.