There's twopapers in Nature Genetics on the 17q21.31, and variation of haplotypes of inversions in world wide populations. Here's a part of the discussion from the first paper:
In conclusion, we propose that the ancestral H2′ haplotype arose in eastern or central Africa and spread to southern Africa before the emergence of anatomically modern humans...Approximately 2.3 million years ago, the inversion rearranged to what we now refer as the direct orientation haplotype (H1′). This haplotype spread throughout the Homo ancestral populations in the African continent, virtually replacing the H2′ haplotype and becoming the predominant haplotype. We note that both the Denisova and Neandertal sister groups are predicted to have H1′ haplotypes...These early haplotypes were much simpler in their duplication architecture, similar to the patterns seen in great apes. We find that the more complex duplication architectures are particularly enriched in populations that migrated out of Africa. On the basis of ...
