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A handful of recent discoveries has transformed our entire understanding of human history
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Recent discoveries have revealed that much of the traditional
understanding of the human origin story is wrong.
Until the past few years, most anthropologists and archaeologists
believed that the first members of our species - Homo
sapiens - evolved in East Africa
approximately 200,000 years ago.
As that story goes, humanity mostly remained in Africa for the
next 140,000 years, then ventured forth as part of a major wave
known as the
"Out of Africa" migration approximately 60,000 years ago.
In this version of history, those early ancestors took over
territories once occupied by less advanced species like the
Neanderthals. Then humans reached North America about 16,000 t0
25,000 years ago.
But this understanding of history has been thoroughly upended by
a number of discoveries over the past few years.
There's less certainty now about how long ago modern humans truly
evolved, when people spread around the world, and how we
co-existed with a number of other hominid species. New findings
suggest that many events happened much longer ago in history than
researchers previously thought. The process of our own evolution
- and our relationships with other co-existent hominin species -
are also made messier by many of these discoveries.
Here are some of the recent discoveries that have begun to upend
what we thought we knew about the human origin story.
The first <em>Homo sapiens</em> seem to have appeared more than 100,000 years earlier than scientists previously thought — and in different locations.
The bones were unearthed in Morocco, and showed that humans had
been around for far longer than 200,000 years. The discovery was
also evidence that our earliest ancestors may not have been
located in just one area, since this showed that even the
earliest members of our species were in North Africa, far from
spots often considered the birthplace of humanity.
"There is no Garden of Eden in Africa, or if there is, it
is all of Africa," anthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin, who led
the expedition to unearth the skulls,
said at the time.
These discoveries helped lead to a new idea: perhaps <em>Homo sapiens</em> actually evolved all over Africa in interlinked groups that became more similar over time.
As a team of researchers
described in a recent paper, groups of Homo sapiens
may have evolved contemporaneously all over Africa, instead of
just in one primary location.
Not all of these groups would have looked identical at the start,
but they may have been close enough to all be considered Homo
sapiens, even if they weren't the same as the modern
versions of humanity.
So instead of first emerging in a site in East or South Africa
(depending on which version of the traditional origin story you
subscribe to) and then spreading from there, distantly related
groups of humans across the continent could have become more
similar over time.
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This idea is known as the "African multiregionalism" theory.
According to this logic, distantly related groups could have all
evolved from a widespread ancient hominid relative. In different
locations, they may have interbred with and picked up traits from
other ancient hominids, as we know Homo sapiens have
done over time.
(In general, the
term hominid describes great apes, humans, and all our
extinct ancestors; the term hominin is a bit more narrow
referring only to humans and our more closely related extinct
ancestors.)
Ed Yong at The Atlantic wrote that the best way to understand
this theory isn't to think of evolution as a tree in which modern
humans branched off and became a separate group.
"It's a braided river - a group of streams that are all part of
the same system, but that weave into and out of each other,"
Yong wrote. "These streams eventually merge into the same big
channel, but it takes time - hundreds of thousands of years. For
most of our history, any one group of Homo sapiens had just some
of the full constellation of features that we use to define
ourselves."
We've also discovered new hominids that our ancestors may have lived alongside or even occasionally mated with.
In 2013, two spelunkers in South Africa spotted something
promising in a cave. They told National Geographic
explorer-in-residence Lee
Berger of their find. Berger put out an ad searching for
scientists who could excavate, go caving, climb, and fit into
tiny spaces. He ended up recruiting an international team of six
female scientists - later dubbed "underground
astronauts" - who made their way into the cave.
Inside, they discovered thousands of bones from an ancient
hominid that had never before been seen. The researchers
described it in a 2015 paper
with the name Homo naledi.
This small hominid may have lived alongside early Homo
sapiens. The discovery also suggested that there may have
been many other early hominid species that we co-existed with
before becoming the one dominant remaining member of the Homo
genus.
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Some early art that was previously attributed to Homo sapiens was really created by Neanderthals.
We may not have been as different from other hominids as
scientists used to think.
Even if Homo sapiens evolved before we thought,
Neanderthals were around first, appearing in the fossil record at
least 400,000 years back. Many researchers assumed those Homo
neanderthalis were far more primitive than their
later-evolving relatives. But new discoveries challenge that line
of thinking.
Long before what researchers refer to as "modern" humans
ever reached Europe, our Neanderthal cousins were creating
cultural objects and painting in caves in Spain, according to
several recently published studies.
The new research pinpointed when some of the first European
art that we know of was created, and it turns out the visual work
was happening before many places were settled by Homo
sapiens. That indicates Neanderthals and early humans may
have been very similar cognitively and culturally.
We've also found more genetic evidence that shows ancient humans interbred several times with hominin species like Denisovans and Neanderthals.
We've long known that humans mixed with Neanderthals, since most
present-day non-Africans have at least some Neanderthal DNA.
Up to 5% of the DNA of modern residents of Papua New Guinea show
traces of interbreeding with Denisovans. Smaller traces of those
ancient liaisons are found across Asia, too, but we still don't
know too much about Denisovans and our interactions with them.
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The earliest humans left Africa long before we thought, according to recent research.
"The initial dispersals out of Africa prior to 60,000 years
ago were likely by small groups of foragers, and at least some of
these early dispersals left low-level genetic traces in modern
human populations," Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at the
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and an
author of the study, said
in a press release. "A later, major 'Out of Africa'
event most likely occurred around 60,000 years ago or
thereafter."
Some researchers even think humans arrived in North America earlier than the traditionally accepted timeline, though this is still controversial.
Most evidence indicates that humans first reached North America
between 16,000 and 25,000 years ago. But given the upheaval that
other recent discoveries have caused, it seems possible that some
groups could have arrived before then.
At least one team of researchers thinks some sort of hominid
could have reached the Americas 100,000 years earlier than the
traditionally accepted timeline. That idea is based on the
discovery of mastodon bones at a site near what's now San Diego,
California. The bones were found to have been broken apart after
the death of the animal, and fragments of what appear to be
ancient tools were also found at the site.
Plus, given that other early hominids seem to have been more
widespread and intelligent than we thought, it's possible that
early North Americans could have been some other ancient
ancestor, not Homo sapiens.
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The timing and route that <em>Homo sapiens</em> took into North America is still being debated.
Over the past decade, the main idea of how Homo sapiens
first arrived in North America has been that they took a route
along the Pacific coast sometime 25,000 to 15,000 years ago.
But the authors of a new review of
research published August 8 say the path that humans took to
become the first Native Americans is still unclear. Looking at
all the evidence, it's possible that humans could have traveled
either along the coast or through an inland, ice-free corridor
between two massive ice sheets. This latter route is the one
researchers used to favor before the idea of a coastal journey
became prominent.
The authors suggest a simple solution to this question: some of
the first humans to reach North America may have used both
routes.
Although some researchers want to push the timeline earlier, the
authors of this review argue that there's not necessarily any
reason to believe that people crossed into the Americas until
16,000 years ago. Much more research on this is still needed,
though.
There's still a lot we don't know about the human origin story.
As all these findings show, there's a lot of the human origin
story that we have yet to fully understand. Recent research has
called into question traditional narratives about the history of
our ancestors and the creatures we co-existed with. The reality
seems to be messier and less straightforward than previously
thought.
We're still finding traces of history buried away in caves or
even in large analyses of our genetic code that weren't possible
until recently.
We surely have much to learn.
This story was originally published July 22, 2018, and has
been updated with new findings.
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