A new genetic study has revealed findings that suggest that Egypt played a crucial role in the evolution of modern humans 55,000 years ago.

The new study, published online on May 28 in the American Journal of Human Genetics (AJHG), suggests that Egypt was the major gateway that modern humans used to migrate out of Africa in order to inhabit Europe and Asia as Egyptians are more genetically similar to Eurasians than any other African population.

It is well established in the scientific community that Africa was the origin of all modern humans, as research indicates that our ancestors first arose about 200,000 years ago south of the Sahara. However, there had been a lot of disagreement on when the migration started and which route modern humans took on their way out of Africa.

Previous research suggested that the exodus started between 70,000 and 40,000 years ago, while more recent studies suggested that the exodus might have begun as early as 130,000 years ago.

Scientists also found that the move out of Africa was completed through two main routes, a northern route which includes what is now Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula and a southern route which includes what is now Ethiopia and Arabia. But which route was used more was not clear ... until now.

In an attempt to find out which route was used more, Dr. Luca Pagani, of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge in the UK and the rest of the research team, carried out a new genetic analysis by generating 225 whole-genome sequences from six modern Northeast African populations. The study looked at 100 Egyptians and five Ethiopian populations which were each represented by 25 individuals.

The researchers then compared this data with other DNA from East Asians, South Asians and Europeans, as well as DNA from modern West Africans from the south of the Sahara to gain some insights about the ancient Sub-Saharan gene pool.

Because both modern Egyptians and modern Ethiopians recently experienced migration from outside of Africa leading to interbreeding that increases the genetic similarity between them, the researchers made sure they removed any genetic similarities that may have arisen as a result of these recent migrations so as not to tamper with the results.

Through these methods, the results revealed that the Egyptians, and not the Ethiopians, were actually more genetically similar to Eurasians, which suggests that the northern route through Egypt and Sinai was the main gateway for modern humans on their way out of Africa.

"In our research, we generated the first comprehensive set of unbiased genomic data from Northeast Africans and observed, after controlling for recent migrations, a higher genetic similarity between Egyptians and Eurasians than between Ethiopians and Eurasians," Pagani said in a press release .

The researchers’ estimations also revealed that Eurasians genetically diverged from Egyptians 55,000 years ago, from Ethiopians 65,000 years ago and from West Africans 75,000 years ago.

"The most exciting consequence of our results is to have unveiled an episode of the evolutionary past of all Eurasians, therefore potentially improving the knowledge of billions of people on their deep biological history,” Pagani told Live Science .

According to Live Science, there is genetic and archeological evidence that some of the modern humans who migrated out of Africa took the southern route which suggests that they might not have gone further than Arabia. Pagani said that scientists can investigate to see if anyone who took the southern route left genetic traces in modern Oceanians.

“This information will be of great value as a freely available reference panel for future medical and anthropological studies in these areas,” said Pagani.

So apparently Egyptians are not so genetically different from Europeans after all. Perhaps we’re all just one big, highly diverse family.