London, May 15 (IANS): Researchers have found new evidence that humans were living in southern Arabia 10,000 years earlier than initially perceived.

The last Ice Age made much of the globe uninhabitable, but there were oases where people were able to cluster together and survive.

The findings, based on the study of a rare DNA lineage, showed that one of the oases existed in southern Arabia and modern humans dwelt in this territory during the last Ice Age also, known as the Pleistocene glaciation.

R0a -- the rare mitochondrial DNA lineage -- was found to be most frequent in Arabia and the Horn of Africa, said lead author Francesca Gandini, research fellow at the University of Huddersfield in Britain.

Also found was evidence for the movement of people in the R0a descent through the Middle East and into Europe indicating a likely trading network and a "gene flow" from Arabia into the territories that are now Iran, Pakistan and India.

Nearly 15,000 years ago when the Ice Age had receded, the people in this region disappeared.