By Bruce Bower
Way back in the day, females came from far away and males didn’t stray — not far, anyway.
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/14456.jpg?resize=300%2C239&ssl=1)
That’s the implication, with apologies to Dr. Seuss, of a new study of members of two ancient species in the human evolutionary family. Adult females in both hominid lineages often moved from the places where they were born to distant locations, presumably to find mates among unrelated males, say anthropologist Sandi Copeland of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and her colleagues.
Most males in both hominid species spent their entire lives in a home region that covered no more than about 28 square kilometers, or about half the area of Manhattan, Copeland’s team proposes in the June 2 Nature.