European colonisation of Southeast Asia tightening Turkish control and eventual shut down of the Eastern Mediterranean gateways into Asia first prompted Portuguese, and later Spanish and Dutch sea voyagers to ship around Africa in search of new trading routes and business opportunities. Niccolò de' Conti arrived in Southeast Asia as the earliest documented European in the early 15th century. By 1498 Vasco da Gama, who had sailed round the Cape of Good Hope, established the first direct sea route from Europe to India. Central among the various plannings was to establish direct and permanent trade of the highly priced spices, that were native to Southeast
Genetic history of Europe of eastern Asian mtDNA haplogroups, some of which survive in modern eastern European populations. Maternal gene flow to Europe from sub-Saharan Africa began as early as 11,000 years BP, although the majority of lineages, approximately 65%, are estimated to have arrived more recently, including during the Romanization period, the Arab conquests of southern Europe, and during the Atlantic slave trade. A 2007 study by Bauchet, which utilised about 10,000 autosomal DNA SNPs arrived at similar results. Principal component analysis clearly identified four widely dispersed groupings, corresponding to Africa, Europe, Central Asia and South Asia. PC1 separated Africans from the other