Oldest remains of fossils rewrites our species’ history

It has been commonly held wisdom that modern humans, Homo Sapiens evolved from East Africa 200,000 years ago.

Fossils of early members of Homo sapiens found in Morocco (left) display a more elongated skull shape than do modern humans (right). PIC: NHM London

Now new findings in Morocco push that date back to over 300,000 years ago.

Archaeologists unearthed the bones of at least five people at Jebel Irhoud, a former barite mine 100km west of Marrakesh, in excavations that lasted years. They knew the remains were old, but were stunned when dating tests revealed that a tooth and stone tools found with the bones were about 300,000 years old.

The breakdown of the find was a partial skull, a jawbone, teeth and limb bones belonging to three adults, a juvenile, and a child aged about eight years old.

Does that mean that the Homo Sapiens started in Morocco?

Actually not.

The suggestion now is that they evolved separately all over Africa.

Jean-Jacques Hublin, an author of the study and a director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany:

Until now, the common wisdom was that our species emerged probably rather quickly somewhere in a ‘Garden of Eden’ that was located most likely in sub-Saharan Africa
I would say the Garden of Eden in Africa is probably Africa — and it’s a big, big garden.

The dig took 10 years after Hublin came across them first in the 80s and said the tools plus jaws seemed to primitive to be around 160,000 as earlier suggested.

With information from nature.com