Illustration copyright Philipp Gunz/MPI EVA Leipzig Image caption Reconstruction of the skull of the earliest known Homo sapiens, made using scans of numerous remains from Jebel Irhoud

The idea that modern humans emerged in a single “cradle of humanity” in eastern Africa some 200,000 years ago is no longer tenable, says a new study.

Fossils of five early modern humans discovered in northern Africa show that Homo sapiens appeared at least 100,000 years earlier than previously thought.

A study published in the journal Nature suggests that our species has evolved across the continent.

According to Professor Jean-Jacques Hublen from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, the scientists' discovery could lead to rewriting textbooks on the origins of our species.

“We cannot say that everything developed quickly in some kind of Eden somewhere in Africa. In our opinion, the development was more consistent, and it happened throughout the continent. So if there was a Garden of Eden, then it was all of Africa,” - he adds.

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Professor Hublen spoke at a press conference at the Collège de France in Paris, where he proudly showed journalists fragments of fossil human remains found at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco. These are skulls, teeth and tubular bones.

In the 1960s, at this one of the oldest sites of modern humans, remains were discovered, the age of which was estimated at 40 thousand years. They were considered an African form of Neanderthals, close relatives of Homo sapiens.

However, Professor Hublen was always troubled by this interpretation, and when he began working at the Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, he decided to reassess the fossil remains from Jebel Irhoud. More than 10 years later, he tells a very different story.

Using modern technology, he and his colleagues were able to determine that the age of the new finds ranges from 300 thousand to 350 thousand years. And the found skull is almost the same in shape as that of a modern person.

A number of significant differences are noticeable in the slightly more prominent brow ridges and smaller cerebral ventricles (cavities in the brain filled with cerebrospinal fluid).

Excavations also revealed that these ancient people used stone tools and learned to start and make fire. Therefore, they not only looked like Homo sapiens, they behaved the same.

To date, the earliest fossil remains of this type have been discovered at Omo Kibish in Ethiopia. Their age is about 195 thousand years.

"We now need to reconsider our understanding of how the first modern humans came to be," says Professor Hublen.

Before the emergence of Homo sapiens, there were many different primitive human species. Each of them looked different from the others, and each of them had their own strengths and weaknesses. And each of these species, like animals, evolved and gradually changed appearance. This happened over hundreds of thousands of years.

The previously accepted view was that Homo sapiens evolved unexpectedly from more primitive species in eastern Africa about 200,000 years ago. And by this moment, modern man had formed in the most general terms. Moreover, it was only then that the modern species was thought to have begun to spread throughout Africa, and then throughout the planet.

However, Professor Hublen's discoveries may dispel these notions.

The age of finds in many of the excavation sites in Africa dates back to 300 thousand years. Similar tools and evidence of the use of fire have been discovered in many places. But there are no fossil remains on them.

Since most experts based their research on the assumption that our species appeared no earlier than 200 thousand years ago, it was believed that these places were inhabited by more ancient, other species of humans. However, the findings at Jebel Irhoud suggest that it was actually Homo sapiens who left their mark there.

"This shows that there were many places across Africa where Homo sapiens emerged. We need to move away from the assumption that there was one cradle of humanity," said Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, who was not involved in the study.

According to him, there is a high probability that Homo sapiens could even exist at the same time and outside of Africa: “We have fossil remains from Israel, probably of the same age, and they have features similar to those of Homo sapiens.”

Professor Stringer says it is possible that primitive humans with smaller brains, larger faces, and strong brow ridges - nonetheless belonging to Homo sapiens - could have existed in earlier times, perhaps even half a million years ago. This is an incredible change in the until recently dominant ideas about the origin of man,

“20 years ago I said that only those who are like us can be called Homo sapiens. There was an idea that Homo sapiens suddenly appeared in Africa at a certain time and he laid the foundation for our species. But now it seems that I was wrong "Professor Stringer told the BBC.

Before Homo sapiens, i.e. to the modern human stage is as difficult to document satisfactorily as the original branching stage of the hominid lineage. However, in this case, the matter is complicated by the presence of several contenders for such an intermediate position.

According to a number of anthropologists, the step that led directly to Homo sapiens was the Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis). Neanderthals appeared no later than 150 thousand years ago, and different types flourished until the period of c. 40–35 thousand years ago, marked by the undoubted presence of well-formed H. sapiens (Homo sapiens sapiens). This era corresponded to the onset of the Wurm glaciation in Europe, i.e. ice age closest to modern times. Other scientists do not connect the origin of modern humans with Neanderthals, pointing out, in particular, that the morphological structure of the latter’s face and skull was too primitive to have time to evolve to the forms of Homo sapiens.

Neanderthaloids are usually imagined as stocky, hairy, beast-like people with bent legs, with a protruding head on a short neck, giving the impression that they had not yet fully achieved upright walking. Paintings and reconstructions in clay usually emphasize their hairiness and unjustified primitiveness. This image of the Neanderthal is a big distortion. First, we don't know whether Neanderthals were hairy or not. Secondly, they were all completely upright. As for evidence of an inclined position of the body, it was probably obtained from the study of individuals suffering from arthritis.

One of the most surprising features of the entire Neanderthal series of finds is that the least modern of them were the most recent in appearance. This is the so-called the classic Neanderthal type, the skull of which is characterized by a low forehead, a heavy brow, a receding chin, a protruding mouth area, and a long, low cranium. However, their brain volume was larger than that of modern humans. They certainly had a culture: there is evidence of funerary cults and possibly animal cults, since animal bones are found along with the fossil remains of classical Neanderthals.

At one time it was believed that classical Neanderthals lived only in southern and western Europe, and their origin was associated with the advance of the glacier, which placed them in conditions of genetic isolation and climatic selection. However, apparently similar forms were later found in some regions of Africa and the Middle East and possibly in Indonesia. Such a widespread distribution of the classical Neanderthal makes it necessary to abandon this theory.

At the moment, there is no material evidence of any gradual morphological transformation of the classical Neanderthal type into the modern type of man, with the exception of finds made in the Skhul cave in Israel. The skulls discovered in this cave differ significantly from each other, some of them having characteristics that place them in an intermediate position between the two human types. According to some experts, this is evidence of the evolutionary change from Neanderthals to modern humans, while others believe that this phenomenon is the result of mixed marriages between representatives of the two types of people, thereby believing that Homo sapiens evolved independently. This explanation is supported by evidence that as early as 200–300 thousand years ago, i.e. before the appearance of the classical Neanderthal, there was a type of person most likely related to early Homo sapiens, and not to the “progressive” Neanderthal. We are talking about well-known finds - fragments of a skull found in Swan (England), and a more complete skull from Steinheim (Germany).

The controversy regarding the “Neanderthal stage” in human evolution is partly due to the fact that two circumstances are not always taken into account. First, it is possible for the more primitive types of any evolving organism to exist in a relatively unchanged form at the same time that other branches of the same species undergo various evolutionary modifications. Secondly, migrations associated with shifts in climatic zones are possible. Such shifts were repeated in the Pleistocene as glaciers advanced and retreated, and humans could follow shifts in the climate zone. Thus, when considering long periods of time, it must be taken into account that the populations occupying a given habitat at a given time are not necessarily the descendants of populations that lived there at an earlier period. It is possible that early Homo sapiens could migrate from the regions where they appeared, and then return to their original places after many thousands of years, having undergone evolutionary changes. When fully formed Homo sapiens appeared in Europe 35-40 thousand years ago, during the warmer period of the last glaciation, it undoubtedly displaced the classical Neanderthal, which occupied the same region for 100 thousand years. Now it is impossible to accurately determine whether the Neanderthal population moved north, following the retreat of its usual climatic zone, or mixed with Homo sapiens invading its territory.

Note 1

Homo sapiens is the systematic name used in taxonomy (also known as binomial nomenclature) for anatomically modern humans, the only extant human species. The name was coined in 1758 by Carl Linnaeus (who himself is also the type specimen).

Speciation

Extinct species of the genus Homo are classified as "archaic humans". The genus includes at least the distinct species Homo erectus and possibly a number of other species (variably considered also subspecies of either H. sapiens or H. erectus. H. sapiens idaltu is a proposed extinct subspecies of H. sapiens.

The age of speciation of H. sapiens from the ancestral H. erectus (or intermediate species such as Homo heidelbergensis) is thought to be between approximately 300,000-200,000 years ago. However, it is assumed that there was continued interbreeding with archaic human species over a period of time until a period of approximately 30,000 years ago—the point of extinction of any surviving archaic human species, which were apparently absorbed into the expansion of Homo sapiens beginning around 50,000 years ago.

Genus Homo

Definition 1

Homo is a genus that includes the extant species of Homo sapiens (modern humans), as well as several extinct species classified as its ancestors or closely related to modern humans.

The genus Homo is 2 to 3 million years old and descends from the genus Australopithecus, which itself previously split from the Pan lineage of chimpanzees. Taxonomically, Homo is the only genus assigned to the subtribes Hominina, which with the subtropies Australopithecina and Panina constitute the tribe Hominini. All species of the genus Homo, together with the species of australopithecines that arose after the split from Pan, are called hominins. Species of the genus Homo:

1. Homo habilis (Homo habilis) 2.6-2.5 (million years ago) Range: Africa
2. Homo rudolfensis (Rudolphian Man) 2-1.78 (million years ago) Range: Kenya
3. Homo erectus (Homo erectus) 2-0.03 (million years ago) Range: Africa, Eurasia (Java, China, Caucasus)
4. Homo georgicus (Georgian Man)1.8 (million years ago) Range: Georgia
5. Homo ergaster (Working Man) 1.8-1.4 (million years ago) Range: Southern and Eastern Africa
6. Homo antecessor (Human predecessor) 1.2-0.8 (million years ago) Range: Spain
7. Homo cepranensis (Ceprano Man) 0.9-0.8 (million years ago) Range: Italy
8. Homo heidelbergensis (Heidelberg man) 0.8-0.345 (million years ago) Range: Europe, Africa, China
9. Homo rhodesiensis (Rhodesian man) 0.3-0.12 (million years ago) Range: Zambia
10. Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthal) 0.35-0.040 (million years ago) Range: Europe, Western Asia
11. Homo sapiens sapiens (Homo sapiens) 0.2-ac. V. Habitat: everywhere
12. Homo sapiens idaltu (Homo sapiens oldest) 0.16-0.15 (million years ago) Range: Ethiopia
13. Homo floresiensis (Homo floresiensis) 0.10-0.012 (million years ago) Range: Indonesia

Some of the most important species of the genus Homo are Homo erectus and Homo sapiens sapiens

Homo erectus - emerged about two million years ago in East Africa (where it was called Homo ergaster), and in several early migrations it spread throughout Africa and Eurasia. The first hominin probably lived in a hunter-gatherer society and controlled fire.

The adaptive and successful Homo erectus species persisted for nearly 2 million years before suddenly going extinct about 70,000 years ago (0.07 Ma), possibly victims of the superfast Toba catastrophe.

Homo sapiens sapiens – anatomically comparable to modern humans, emerged about 200,000 years ago (0.2 Ma) in East Africa. Modern humans migrated from Africa as early as 60,000 years ago. During the Upper Paleolithic they spread throughout Africa, Eurasia, Oceania and the Americas, and they encountered archaic humans along the way during these migrations. Homo sapiens sapiens is the only surviving species and subspecies of the genus Homo.

Origin of Homo sapiens

Note 2

Traditionally in paleoanthropology, there have been two competing views on the origin of H. sapiens: a recent African origin and a multiregional origin.

Recent genetic research has also led to the emergence of an intermediate position characterized by mostly recent African ancestry with the addition of limited admixture (introgression) from archaic humans.

The recent African origin of modern humans is the main model that describes the origin and early distribution of anatomically modern humans. The theory is called the (recent) extra-African model, and also academically the recent single origin hypothesis (RSOH), to replace the recent African origin hypothesis and model (RAO). The hypothesis that humans have a single origin (monogenesis) was published in The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin (1871). This concept was speculative until the 1980s, when it was confirmed by the study of modern mitochondrial DNA combined with evidence based on the physical anthropology of archaic specimens. According to genetic and fossil evidence, archaic Homo sapiens evolved into anatomically modern humans in Africa approximately 200,000 years ago, at a time when members of one lineage of the species left Africa 60,000 years ago and eventually replaced earlier human populations such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus. A very recent (2017) study of fossils found in Jebel Irouda, Morocco, suggested that Homo sapiens may have evolved as early as 315,000 years ago. Some other evidence also suggests that Homo sapiens may have migrated out of Africa as early as 270,000 years ago.

Note 3

The recent single origin of modern humans in East Africa was a near-consensus position held in the scientific community until 2010. However, in 2010, significant archaic human admixture with modern humans was discovered.

The multiregional origins model proposed by Milford H. Wolpoff in 1988 provides a different explanation for the pattern of human evolution. The multi-regional origin suggests that the evolution of humanity dates back to the Pleistocene 2.5 million years ago and to the present day represents one continuous human species.

Neanderthals [The History of Failed Humanity] Vishnyatsky Leonid Borisovich

Homeland of homo sapiens

Homeland of homo sapiens

With all the diversity of views on the problem of the origin of homo sapiens (Fig. 11.1), all proposed options for its solution can be reduced to two main opposing theories, which were briefly discussed in Chapter 3. According to one of them, monocentric, the place of origin of people of modern anatomical type there was some rather limited territorial region, from where they subsequently settled throughout the planet, gradually displacing, destroying or assimilating the hominid populations that preceded them in different places. Most often, East Africa is considered as such a region, and the corresponding theory of the emergence and spread of homo sapiens is called the “African exodus” theory. The opposite position is taken by researchers who defend the so-called “multiregional” - polycentric - theory, according to which the evolutionary formation of homo sapiens occurred everywhere, that is, in Africa, Asia, and Europe, on a local basis, but with more or less widespread exchange genes between populations of these regions. Although the dispute between monocentrists and polycentrists, which has a long history, is still not over, the initiative is now clearly in the hands of supporters of the theory of the African origin of homo sapiens, and their opponents have to give up one position after another.

Rice. 11.1. Possible origin scenarios Homo sapiens: A- the candelabra hypothesis, which assumes independent evolution in Europe, Asia and Africa from local hominids; b- multiregional hypothesis, which differs from the first by recognizing the exchange of genes between populations of different regions; V- the hypothesis of complete replacement, according to which our species originally appeared in Africa, from where it subsequently spread throughout the planet, displacing the forms of hominids that preceded it in other regions and without mixing with them; G- assimilation hypothesis, which differs from the complete replacement hypothesis by recognizing partial hybridization between sapiens and the indigenous populations of Europe and Asia

First, fossil anthropological materials clearly indicate that people of a modern or very close to such physical type appeared in East Africa already at the end of the Middle Pleistocene, that is, much earlier than anywhere else. The oldest currently known anthropological find attributed to homo sapiens is the skull of Omo 1 (Fig. 11.2), discovered in 1967 near the northern coast of Lake. Turkana (Ethiopia). Its age, judging by the available absolute dating and a number of other data, ranges from 190 to 200 thousand years ago. The well-preserved frontal and, especially, occipital bones of this skull are anatomically quite modern, as are the remains of the bones of the facial skeleton. A fairly developed chin protuberance is recorded. According to the conclusion of many anthropologists who studied this find, the skull of Omo 1, as well as the known parts of the postcranial skeleton of the same individual, do not bear signs that go beyond the usual range of variability for homo sapiens.

Rice. 11.2. Omo 1 skull is the oldest of all anthropological finds attributed to homo sapiens

In general, three skulls found not so long ago at the Kherto site in Middle Awash, also in Ethiopia, are very close in structure to the finds from Omo. One of them has reached us almost entirely (except for the lower jaw), the other two are also quite well preserved. The age of these skulls ranges from 154 to 160 thousand years. In general, despite the presence of a number of primitive features, the morphology of the skulls from Kherto allows us to consider their owners as ancient representatives of the modern human form. The remains of people of a modern or very similar anatomical type comparable in age were discovered at a number of other East African sites, for example in the Mumba Grotto (Tanzania) and the Dire Dawa Cave (Ethiopia). Thus, a number of well-studied and fairly reliably dated anthropological finds from East Africa indicate that people who did not differ or differed little anatomically from the current inhabitants of the Earth lived in this region 150-200 thousand years ago.

Rice. 11.3. Some links in the evolutionary line believed to have led to the appearance of the species Homo sapiens: 1 - Bodo, 2 - Broken Hill, 3 - Latoli, 4 - Omo 1, 5 - Border

Secondly, of all the continents, only Africa is known to have a large number of remains of hominids of a transitional nature, which make it possible, at least in general terms, to trace the process of transformation of local homo erectus into people of a modern anatomical type. It is believed that the immediate predecessors and ancestors of the first homo sapiens in Africa could be hominids represented by skulls such as Singa (Sudan), Florisbad (South Africa), Ileret (Kenya) and a number of other finds. They date back to the second half of the Middle Pleistocene. Skulls from Broken Hill (Zambia), Ndutu (Tanzania), Bodo (Ethiopia) and a number of other samples are considered as somewhat earlier links in this line of evolution (Fig. 11.3). All African hominids, anatomically and chronologically intermediate between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, are sometimes classified along with their European and Asian contemporaries as Homo heidelbergensis, and sometimes included in special species, the earlier of which is called Homo rhodesiensis ( Homo rhodesiensis), and the later Homo Helmei ( Homo helmei).

Thirdly, genetic data, according to most experts in this field, also point to Africa as the most likely initial center for the formation of the species Homo sapiens. It is no coincidence that the greatest genetic diversity among modern human populations is observed there, and as we move away from Africa, this diversity decreases more and more. This is how it should be if the theory of the “African exodus” is correct: after all, the populations of homo sapiens, which were the first to leave their ancestral home and settled somewhere in the vicinity of it, “captured” only part of the species gene pool on the way, those groups that then branched off from them and moved even further - only part of part and so on.

Finally, fourthly, the skeleton of the first European homo sapiens is characterized by a number of features that are typical of inhabitants of the tropics and hot subtropics, but not of high latitudes. This has already been discussed in Chapter 4 (see Fig. 4.3–4.5). This picture agrees well with the theory of the African origin of people of modern anatomical type.