The dominant palaeoanthropologists suggest our species‘ antecedents originated in Africa and migrated in Eurasia around 60,000 years ago. Now, new human fossils from Israel suggest something different.
The roots of the humankind have always been a little bit of an obscure subject. We don’t own one ultimate account, instead, a few rigid details that can sometimes even lead to confronting directions.
The most important thing, however, is not the archaeological and genetic evidence that we discover but their correct understanding.
There is no human DNA older than 45,000 years available. Furthermore, nor there is a dense record of human fossils. This means that only one revolutionary discovery could alter the whole story of human origins.
Scientists from Israel found an archaic Homo sapiens jaw fragment. This was connected with another discovery dating from 2002, at the Misliya Cave site.
The fossil is near twice as old as any previous Homo sapiens remains discovered outside Africa.
The article published in the Journal Nature tells how researchers found this discovery only a few kilometers away from the Skhul cave. Namely, this cave is famous for providing human remains dated at 80,000 to 120,000 years old.
After a throughout investigation through several methods, the jaw fragment was acknowledged to have belonged to a modern human living from 177,000 to 194,000 years ago.
The teeth are larger than average, however, their shape and are clearly Homo Sapiens.
Stone tools and blades nearby imply the cave’s inhabitants were proficient hunters. They apparently used weapons and delicately carved blades.
“We called it ‘Searching for the Origins of the Earliest Modern Humans’; this was what we were looking for,” says Mina Weinstein-Evron, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa in Israel.
This amazing ancient finding denies, even more, the recent “Out of Africa” model. Not only early human beings were living in Africa 120,000 years ago, they have also settled in Western Eurasia almost 200,000 years ago.
Israel’s discovery is practically coincident with those of the oldest early modern human fossils of East Africa, at 160,000 to 195,000 years of age.
This recent release only complements numerous other findings, including a new status for China’s Dali Skull. Scientists confirmed this discovery is a 260,000-year-old Homo Sapiens.
Other big reversion of the existing patterns included the apprehension of an interbreeding event between Neanderthals and ancient Homo sapiens that was happening in Eurasia about 270,000 years ago.
An analysis of a Neanderthal bone at the Hohlenstein-Stadel archaeological location in Germany confirmed these facts.
If we consider several discoveries of potential ancient Homo sapiens populations living at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco around 300,000 years ago and others in China, we can easily understand human beings were extremely mobile.
Thus, it is about time to reject the ideas of humans to have controlled East Africa 200,000 years ago.
“The fossil could indicate that Israel and the rest of the Arabian Peninsula were part of a larger region in which H. sapiens evolved,” says John Shea, an archaeologist at Stony Brook University in New York.