The Oldest of Our Kind Ever Found Rewrites History Books
Scientists discover the oldest Homo sapiens fossils at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco
New finds of fossils and stone tools from the archaeological site of Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, push back the origins of our species by one hundred thousand years and show that by about 300 thousand years ago important changes in our biology and behaviour had taken place across most of Africa.
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© Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig (License: CC-BY-SA 2.0)
An international research team led by Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany) and Abdelouahed Ben-Ncer of the National Institute for Archaeology and Heritage (INSAP, Rabat, Morocco) uncovered fossil bones of Homo sapiens along with stone tools and animal bones at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco. The finds are dated to about 300 thousand years ago and represent the oldest securely dated fossil evidence of our own species. This date is 100 thousand years earlier than the previous oldest Homo sapiens fossils. The discoveries reported in two papers in the June 8th issue of the journal Nature by Hublin et al. and by Richter et al. reveal a complex evolutionary history of mankind that likely involved the entire African continent.
Both genetic data of present day humans and fossil remains point to an African origin of our own species, Homo sapiens. Previously, the oldest securely dated Homo sapiens fossils were known from the site of Omo Kibish in Ethiopia, dated to 195 thousand years ago. At Herto, also in Ethiopia, a Homo sapiens fossil is dated to 160 thousand years ago. Until now, most researchers believed that all humans living today descended from a population that lived in East Africa around 200 thousand years ago.
The Moroccan site of Jebel Irhoud has been well known since the 1960s for its human fossils and for its Middle Stone Age artefacts. However, the interpretation of the Irhoud hominins has long been complicated by persistent uncertainties surrounding their geological age. The new excavation project, which began in 2004, resulted in the discovery of new Homo sapiens fossils in situ, increasing their number from six to 22. These finds confirm the importance of Jebel Irhoud as the oldest and richest African Middle Stone Age hominin site documenting an early stage of our species.
“Well dated sites of this age are exceptionally rare in Africa, but we were fortunate that so many of the Jebel Irhoud flint artefacts had been heated in the past,” says geochronology expert Daniel Richter of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig (Germany), now with Freiberg Instruments GmbH. Richter explains: “This allowed us to apply thermoluminescence dating methods on the flint artefacts and establish a consistent chronology for the new hominin fossils and the layers above them.”
The crania of modern humans living today are characterized by a combination of features that distinguish us from our fossil relatives and ancestors: a small and gracile face, and globular braincase. The fossils from Jebel Irhoud display a modern-looking face and teeth, and a large but more archaic-looking braincase. Hublin and his team used state-of-the-art micro computed tomographic scans and statistical shape analysis based on hundreds of 3D measurements to show that the facial shape of the Jebel Irhoud fossils is almost indistinguishable from that of modern humans living today. In contrast to their modern facial morphology, however, the Jebel Irhoud crania retain a rather elongated archaic shape of the braincase.
Excavators working on the remaining deposits at Jebel Irhoud (Morocco). The new fossils were found in the sediments in front of where the two excavators on the left are working.
The morphology and age of the fossils from Jebel Irhoud also corroborate the interpretation of an enigmatic partial cranium from Florisbad, South Africa, as an early representative of Homo sapiens. The earliest Homo sapiens fossils are found across the entire African continent: Jebel Irhoud, Morocco (300 thousand years), Florisbad, South Africa (260 thousand years), and Omo Kibish, Ethiopia (195 thousand years). This indicates a complex evolutionary history of our species, possibly involving the whole African continent.
“North Africa has long been neglected in the debates surrounding the origin of our species. The spectacular discoveries from Jebel Irhoud demonstrate the tight connections of the Maghreb with the rest of the African continent at the time of Homo sapiens’ emergence”, says Abdelouahed Ben-Ncer.
The fossils were found in deposits containing animal bones showing evidence of having been hunted, with the most frequent species being gazelle. The stone tools associated with these fossils belong to the Middle Stone Age. The Jebel Irhoud artefacts show the use of Levallois prepared core techniques and pointed forms are the most common. Most stone tools were made from high quality flint imported into the site. Handaxes, a tool commonly found in older sites, are not present at Jebel Irhoud. Middle Stone Age artefact assemblages such as the one recovered from Jebel Irhoud are found across Africa at this time and likely speak to an adaptation that allowed Homo sapiens to disperse across the continent.
“The stone artefacts from Jebel Irhoud look very similar to ones from deposits of similar age in east Africa and in southern Africa” says Max Planck Institute archaeologist Shannon McPherron. “It is likely that the technological innovations of the Middle Stone Age in Africa are linked to the emergence of Homo sapiens.” The new findings from Jebel Irhoud elucidate the evolution of Homo sapiens, and show that our species evolved much earlier than previously thought. The dispersal of Homo sapiens across all of Africa around 300 thousand years is the result of changes in both biology and behaviour.
The Jebel Irhoud project is jointly conducted and supported by the Moroccan Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine and the Department of Human Evolution of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. The Max Planck Society funded the TL analysis. Parts of ESR/U-series research were funded by ARC discovery grants.
Contacts and sources:
Prof. Dr. Jean-Jacques Hublin [English, French]
Paleoanthropologist, Director of the Department of Human Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig
Citation:
Jean-Jacques Hublin, Abdelouahed Ben-Ncer, Shara E. Bailey, Sarah E. Freidline, Simon Neubauer, Matthew M. Skinner, Inga Bergmann, Adeline Le Cabec, Stefano Benazzi, Katerina Harvati, Philipp Gunz
New fossils from Jebel Irhoud (Morocco) and the Pan-African origin of Homo sapiens
Nature, 7 June 2017, DOI: 10.1038/nature22336
Daniel Richter, Rainer Grün, Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Teresa E. Steele, Fethi Amani, Mathieu Rué, Paul Fernandes, Jean-Paul Raynal, Denis Geraads, Abdelouahed Ben-Ncer, Jean-Jacques Hublin, Shannon P. McPherron
The Age of the Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud (Morocco) and the origins of the Middle Stone Age
Nature, 7 June 2017, DOI: 10.1038/nature22335
Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/2017/06/the-oldest-of-our-kind-ever-found.html
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We are homo sapien sapien, We are not homo sapien. Does this mean we evolved from homo sapien. Nope.
sssh, don’t mention this to the christians…
Without a doubt if it isn’t flat on a turtles back surrounded by ice and only 6 thousands years old we must be government shills. Because ya know the babel trumps science of course, pesky evidence and research and facts and all, fables and allegory must be more true.
Too true, these people can be hilarious. To watch them trying desperately to explain rationaly the gumph in the bible is so funny.
I even had one dumbo explaining how noah lived to 900 due to a ”hyper-oxygenated” environment after the flood. How he thought snails,slugs and sloths managed to inch their way to the ark in 2 days anyway is beyond stupidity.
There is no arguing with these delusions though, because it’s impossible to argue against something for which there is no evidence.
If i started to believe in the magic soup dragon god, there is no way you could prove me wrong. You can only say there is absolutely no evidence for it, same as any deity both now and in the past.
I would not mind all this religious garbage.Let people have their invisible friends if it brings them some comfort.
Sadly, they just cannot keep it to themselves, the fallout being schism,war,death and deprevation.
If they were so fervorous about it, it would almost be amusing. But since they have this uncontrollable need to cram their imaginary friends down everyone else’s throats it just pissed me off instead.
weren’t (BIN: EDIT BUTTON FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!)
Two things from the article that stick out in my mind, firstly it’s either 300,000 or three hundred thousand, not some amalgam of the two, but that’s just me being a grammar nazi. Second is the use of the word possibly, so in actual fact we don’t really know. Or to put it another way, would a bank loan you 250,000 monetary units of wherever you are in the world, on the possibility of winning 1,000,000 monetary units. Put in those terms the word possibly or possible doesn’t hold much value.