![]() ![]() That’s what makes the Misliya jawbone so valuable: if it is accepted as a Homo sapiens fossil, it offers concrete proof that we humans moved out of Africa much earlier than previously believed. Yet neither of these two studies could offer definitive insight into when, precisely, Homo sapiens began moving out of Africa. The researchers declared that the bones belonged to Homo sapiens, making them the oldest bones from our species ever found, once again pushing back the date at which Homo sapiens appeared. Those skulls showed a mixture of modern and archaic traits (unlike the Misliya bone, which has more uniformly modern traits). Then, in 2017, researchers found human remains in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco that dated to 315,000 years ago. In 2016, scientists analyzing ancient Neanderthal DNA in comparison with that of modern humans argued that our species diverged from other hominin species more than 500,000 years ago, meaning Homo sapiens must have evolved earlier than believed. The Misliya jawbone is only the most recent piece in what has become the increasingly complex puzzle of human evolution. Charred laminated vegetal tissues make up the earliest evidence for bedding or matting to date. Wood ash, as well as burnt animal bones, flint implements and phytoliths. ![]() The habitual use of fire is also evident from abundant Hearths were repeatedly constructed during the long habitation of the cave. The Misliya Cave Early Middle Paleolithic layers of the Upper Terrace of the cave, during excavation. If we have modern humans here 200,000 years ago, it means evolution started much earlier, and we have to think about what happened to these people, how they interacted or mated with other species in the area.” “Now we see how right we were to give it such a promising title. “When we started the project we were presumptuous enough to name it ‘Searching for the origins of modern Homo sapiens,’” says Mina Weinstein-Evron, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa and one of the authors of the paper. Using multiple dating techniques to analyze the crust on the bones, the enamel of the teeth and the flint tools found nearby, researchers honed in on the astounding age. A team of archaeologists unearthed the maxilla in Misliya Cave, part of a long complex of prehistoric settlements in the Mount Carmel coastal mountain range in Israel, along with burnt flints and other tools. The find hinges on the partial jawbone and teeth of what appears to be an ancient human. But this new discovery goes one step further: if verified, it would require reevaluating the whole history of human evolution-and possibly pushing it back by several hundred thousand years. The new research, published today in Science, builds on earlier evidence from other caves in the region that housed the bones of humans from 90,000 to 120,000 years ago. The find, which they’ve dated to somewhere between 177,000 and 194,000 years, provides the most convincing proof yet that the old view of human migration needs some serious re-examination. For many years, the consensus view among archaeologists placed the exodus at 60,000 years ago-some 150,000 years after the hominins first appeared.īut now, researchers in Israel have found a remarkably preserved jawbone they believe belongs to a Homo sapiens that was much, much older. That moment, after all, was a crucial step on the way to today’s human-dominated world. For decades, scientists have speculated about when exactly the bipedal apes known as Homo sapiens left Africa and moved out to conquer the world. ![]()
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