This finding was robust to a wide range of potential artifacts stemming from uncertainties in the masking process (Figures S3, S4, and S6A; Table S4; note particularly the false-positive rate displayed in column 8) and was replicated in a South Asian population (GIH; Figure S6B). Furthermore, we showed with simulations that the error rate present in the masking process (Table S4) was unlikely to affect our findings (Figures S4 and S6). Even when we added a 10% misclassification error to the Ethiopians, Egyptians held as the African population showing the highest affinity to non-Africans. Alternative scenarios involving early back-to-Africa migrations27 as the source of haplotype sharing between Egyptian′ and non-African samples were considered as sources of the observed pattern. However, such confounding backflow would need to have taken place prior to the split between East Asians and Europeans (ca. ∼40,000 years ago) and, if this genetic component originated from the main OOA founding event, is likely to have been removed by the non-African masking procedure, which was designed for this purpose.