20,000 years ago? That is easy. The fossil evidence of homo sapiens has determined that humans have been around for over 300,000 years in Africa 210,000 years in Europe.
This 210,000-Year-Old Skull May Be the Oldest Human Fossil Found in Europe | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine
This 210,000-Year-Old Skull May Be the Oldest Human Fossil Found in Europe
A new study could shake up the accepted timeline of Homo Sapiens’ arrival on the continent—though not all experts are on board
In the late 1970s, two fossilized human crania were discovered in the Apidima cave in southern Greece. Researchers were somewhat befuddled by the remains; they were incomplete and distorted, for one, and had been found without any archaeological context, like stone tools. But because the skulls had been encased in a single block of stone, experts assumed they were the same age and of the same species—possibly Neanderthals.
Now, a bombshell study published in
Nature posits that one of the crania, dubbed “Apidima 1,” in fact belonged to an early modern human that lived 210,000 years ago. The report has been met with skepticism by some experts, but if its conclusions are correct, Apidima 1 represents the oldest
Homo sapiens fossil in Europe by some
160,000 years.
For the past 40-odd years, Apidima 1 and the other cranium, “Apidima 2,” have been held at the University of Athen’s Museum of Anthropology. Scientists there recently reached out to
Katerina Harvati, director of paleoanthropology at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, to see if she would be interested in taking a fresh look at the skulls, reports Maya Wei-Haas of
National Geographic.
Harvati and a team of colleagues analyzed the remains using cutting-edge techniques. First, they CT-scanned both fossils and generated 3D reconstructions in an attempt to get a better picture of what the skulls looked like. Though it had been badly damaged over the centuries, Apidima 2 is the more complete fossil; it includes the facial region, and the new models affirmed
previous research indicating that the specimen belonged to a Neanderthal. Apidima 1 consists of just the back of the crania, but the team’s reconstructions and analyses revealed something surprising: the fossil’s features were consistent not with those of Neanderthals, but with those of modern humans.
Tellingly, the Apidima 1 fossil lacks a “chignon,” the distinctive bulge at the back of the skull that is characteristic of Neanderthals. The posterior of the skull is also rounded, which “is considered to be a uniquely modern human feature that evolved relatively late,” Harvati tells Ed Yong of the
Atlantic. And when the team dated the fossils by analyzing the radioactive decay of trace uranium in the specimens, they got another shock. Apidima 2 was found to be around 170,000 years old, which is consistent with the age of other Neanderthal fossils in Europe. But Apidima 1 was dated to 210,000 years ago, making it by far the oldest
Homo sapiens fossil found on the continent.
