High atop a dusty plateau on the Arabian Peninsula, archaeologist Jeffrey Rose picked up a rock, saw something surprising, and started asking questions that could change history. His unusual discoveries in southern Oman help shape new theories about when early humans may have exited Africa, who those pioneers were, and what route they took on the first stage of their journey to every corner of the Earth.

In the late 1990s geneticists identified mitochondrial DNA signatures suggesting that the first humans to leave Africa may have traveled through Ethiopia to Yemen and Oman. Scientists theorized they were beachcombers who followed the coastline. Rose arrived in the area, eager to test the theory that Arabia was the gateway out of Africa by searching for archaeological evidence. "We surveyed for years," he recalls. "Stone Age artifacts littered the landscape; virtually any place I stopped the car, I found a Paleolithic site. But none of it showed a connection to Africa; and along the coast we found no evidence of humans at all."

He and his international team of scientists returned to Oman in 2010, and on the final day of their surveying season, at the last site on their list, "we hit the jackpot." The find was a very specific stone tool technology used by the "Nubian Complex," nomadic hunters from Africa's Nile Valley. Nubian technology is a unique method of making spear points that was previously only known from North Africa. Rose's team ultimately discovered over a hundred workshop sites where these artifacts were manufactured en masse. "It was scientific euphoria," he describes.

High atop a dusty plateau on the Arabian Peninsula, archaeologist Jeffrey Rose picked up a rock, saw something surprising, and started asking questions that could change history. His unusual discoveries in southern Oman help shape new theories about when early humans may have exited Africa, who those pioneers were, and what route they took on the first stage of their journey to every corner of the Earth.

In the late 1990s geneticists identified mitochondrial DNA signatures suggesting that the first humans to leave Africa may have traveled through Ethiopia to Yemen and Oman. Scientists theorized they were beachcombers who followed the coastline. Rose arrived in the area, eager to test the theory that Arabia was the gateway out of Africa by searching for archaeological evidence. "We surveyed for years," he recalls. "Stone Age artifacts littered the landscape; virtually any place I stopped the car, I found a Paleolithic site. But none of it showed a connection to Africa; and along the coast we found no evidence of humans at all."

He and his international team of scientists returned to Oman in 2010, and on the final day of their surveying season, at the last site on their list, "we hit the jackpot." The find was a very specific stone tool technology used by the "Nubian Complex," nomadic hunters from Africa's Nile Valley. Nubian technology is a unique method of making spear points that was previously only known from North Africa. Rose's team ultimately discovered over a hundred workshop sites where these artifacts were manufactured en masse. "It was scientific euphoria," he describes. began shooting short videos every few days and chronicling his work via Twitter updates and website posts. "You can't put into words how unique the landscape here is. Arabia feels like this romantic lost world filled with mysterious ruins; it's a living museum of artifacts. Everyone on Earth had ancestors who passed through this place; why wouldn't you want to show it to people?"

"I'm like a kid in a candy store, there's so much to learn; and now we have so many ways to disseminate informationthe Internet, blogs, myriad TV channels, documentariesit's all making science more interesting, digestible, and relevant to the public," he says. "There's no reason for archaeology and history to be stuffy. How could you not want to know how you got here? It's been said that there's more diversity within a group of 55 chimpanzees than in the entire human population. I think if we help people conceptualize how tiny the genetic distance is between them, it might even help bridge some of the tensions in our world today."

Trying to explain what keeps him based in a desert truck stop, digging through sand, and lugging 100-pound loads of rocks in 100-degree heat, Rose says, "It's like an itch you absolutely have to scratch. An answer you have to find. Who lived here? What were they doing? Are these the people who went on to colonize the entire world? Now that we know it was the Nubians who spread from Africa, I want to know why them in particular? What was it about their technology and culture that enabled them to expand so successfully? And what happened next? That's one of the defining characteristics of our specieswe've always looked to the beginning and wanted to understand how we got here. That's what it means to be human."

Television Personalities, National geographic, Archaeologist, Research & Exploration