World’s Oldest Modern Humans: 300,000-year-old Fossils Found in Morocco | Middle East And North Africa

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300,000-YEAR-OLD MODERN HUMAN FOSSILS FOUND IN MOROCCO

Jebel Irhoud skull

Our concept of human origins was thrown for a major loop in 2017 with the announcement of the discovery of modern human fossils, dated to 300,00 years ago, about 100,000 years older than any other known remains of our species, Homo sapien, in an old mine on a desolate mountain in Morocco. Both the date of the fossils — skulls, limb bones and teeth from at least five individuals — and their location were surprises — “a blockbuster discovery.” [Source: Will Dunham, Reuters, June 8, 2017 ^]

Will Dunham of Reuters wrote: “The antiquity of the fossils was startling - a “big wow,” as one of the researchers called it. But their discovery in North Africa, not East or even sub-Saharan Africa, also defied expectations. And the skulls, with faces and teeth matching people today but with archaic and elongated braincases, showed our brain needed more time to evolve its current form. “This material represents the very root of our species,” said paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, who helped lead the research published in the journal Nature.

“Before the discovery at the site called Jebel Irhoud, located between Marrakech and Morocco’s Atlantic coast, the oldest Homo sapiens fossils were known from an Ethiopian site called Omo Kibish, dated to 195,000 years ago. “The message we would like to convey is that our species is much older than we thought and that it did not emerge in an Adamic way in a small ‘Garden of Eden’ somewhere in East Africa. It is a pan-African process and more complex scenario than what has been envisioned so far,” Hublin said. ^

“The Moroccan fossils, found in what was a cave setting, represented three adults, one adolescent and one child roughly age 8, thought to have lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. These were found alongside bones of animals including gazelles and zebras that they hunted, stone tools perhaps used as spearheads and knives, and evidence of extensive fire use. An analysis of stone flints heated up in the ancient fires let the scientists calculate the age of the adjacent human fossils, Max Planck Institute archaeologist Shannon McPherron said. ^

Websites and Resources on Hominins and Human Origins: Smithsonian Human Origins Program humanorigins.si.edu ; Institute of Human Origins iho.asu.edu ; Becoming Human University of Arizona site becominghuman.org ; Talk Origins Index talkorigins.org/origins ; Last updated 2006. Hall of Human Origins American Museum of Natural History amnh.org/exhibitions ; Wikipedia article on Human Evolution Wikipedia ; Evolution of Modern Humans anthro.palomar.edu ; Human Evolution Images evolution-textbook.org; Hominin Species talkorigins.org ; Paleoanthropology Links talkorigins.org ; Britannica Human Evolution britannica.com ; Human Evolution handprint.com ; National Geographic Map of Human Migrations genographic.nationalgeographic.com ; Humin Origins Washington State University wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules ; University of California Museum of Anthropology ucmp.berkeley.edu; BBC The evolution of man" bbc.co.uk/sn/prehistoric_life; "Bones, Stones and Genes: The Origin of Modern Humans" (Video lecture series). Howard Hughes Medical Institute.; Human Evolution Timeline ArchaeologyInfo.com ; Walking with Cavemen (BBC) bbc.co.uk/sn/prehistoric_life ; PBS Evolution: Humans pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/humans; PBS: Human Evolution Library www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library; Human Evolution: you try it, from PBS pbs.org/wgbh/aso/tryit/evolution; John Hawks' Anthropology Weblog johnhawks.net/ ; New Scientist: Human Evolution newscientist.com/article-topic/human-evolution;

Websites and Resources on Neanderthals: Wikipedia: Neanderthals Wikipedia ; Neanderthals Study Guide thoughtco.com ; Neandertals on Trial, from PBS pbs.org/wgbh/nova; The Neanderthal Museum neanderthal.de/en/ ; The Neanderthal Flute, by Bob Fink greenwych.ca. Websites and Resources on Prehistoric Art: Chauvet Cave Paintings archeologie.culture.fr/chauvet ; Cave of Lascaux archeologie.culture.fr/lascaux/en; Trust for African Rock Art (TARA) africanrockart.org; Bradshaw Foundation bradshawfoundation.com; Australian and Asian Palaeoanthropology, by Peter Brown peterbrown-palaeoanthropology.net. Fossil Sites and Organizations: The Paleoanthropology Society paleoanthro.org; Institute of Human Origins (Don Johanson's organization) iho.asu.edu/; The Leakey Foundation leakeyfoundation.org; The Stone Age Institute stoneageinstitute.org; The Bradshaw Foundation bradshawfoundation.com ; Turkana Basin Institute turkanabasin.org; Koobi Fora Research Project kfrp.com; Maropeng Cradle of Humankind, South Africa maropeng.co.za ; Blombus Cave Project web.archive.org/web; Journals: Journal of Human Evolution journals.elsevier.com/; American Journal of Physical Anthropology onlinelibrary.wiley.com; Evolutionary Anthropology onlinelibrary.wiley.com; Comptes Rendus Palevol journals.elsevier.com/ ; PaleoAnthropology paleoanthro.org.

Jebel Irhoud and Its 300,000-Year-Old Modern Human Fossils

Jebel Irhoud location

The fossils were found at Jebel Irhoud, a former barite mine 100 kilometers west of Marrakesh, where excavations had been going on for years. Ian Sample wrote in The Guardian: “Jebel Irhoud has thrown up puzzles for scientists since fossilised bones were first found at the site in the 1960s. Remains found in 1961 and 1962, and stone tools recovered with them, were attributed to Neanderthals and at first considered to be only 40,000 years old. [Source: Ian Sample, The Guardian, June 7, 2017 |=|]

Gemma Tarlach wrote in Discover: “In 2004, when researchers revisited the previously excavated early hominin site of Jebel Irhoud at first. The mid-20th century mining operations that had turned up the first hominin bones had also destroyed much of the site, and the method in which some of those first finds had been collected made dating them with any confidence a difficult undertaking. But Jebel Irhoud was not finished sharing its secrets. The researchers found an area of the site that had been preserved, and discovered more fossils — from at least five individuals — plus numerous stone tools and other artifacts, some of which appeared to have been heated in a controlled fire. While the bones may get all the headlines, these bits of flint, apparently flaked off into the fire as tools were sharpened, are just as important: The material was perfect for dating using the thermoluminescence method. [Source: Gemma Tarlach, Discover, June 7, 2017]

Sample wrote:“In fresh excavations at the Jebel Irhoud site, Hublin and others found more remains, including a partial skull, a jawbone, teeth and limb bones belonging to three adults, a juvenile, and a child aged about eight years old. The remains, which resemble modern humans more than any other species, were recovered from the base of an old limestone cave that had its roof smashed in during mining operations at the site. Alongside the bones, researchers found sharpened flint tools, a good number of gazelle bones, and lumps of charcoal, perhaps left over from fires that warmed those who once lived there. It’s rather a desolate landscape, but on the horizon you have the Atlas mountains with snow on top and it’s very beautiful,” said Hublin. “When we found the skull and mandible I was emotional. They are only fossils, but they have been human beings and very quickly you make a connection with these people who lived and died here 300,000 years ago.”

Gemma Tarlach wrote in Discover: “While Jebel Irhoud today is surrounded by desert, about 300,000 years ago it would have been more hospitable to hominins and their prey, said Shannon McPherron, lead author of today’s paper dating the fossils and artifacts. When the hominins lived, the layer of the quarried hill in which their fossils were found would have been a cave providing shelter from the elements. Within that same area of the site were the bones of gazelles, zebra, wildebeest and the antelope-like hartebeest. Paleoclimate data points to the area being more humid than today, while the animal bones found suggest, said McPherron, “a landscape that is mainly open, with clumps of trees.” [Source: Gemma Tarlach, Discover, June 7, 2017]

“The overall picture one gets is of a hunting encampment, as they were moving across the area in search of subsistence,” McPherron added. And there is strong evidence the hominins were indeed on the move. The flint they were using for their tools is not local. Analysis showed it came from a site more than 20 kilometers away, suggesting the hominins intentionally sought out quality tool-making material and carried it with them.

Jebel Irhoud People

Will Dunham of Reuters wrote: ““The Jebel Irhoud people had large braincases that lacked the globular shape of those today. Max Planck Institute paleoanthropologist Philipp Gunz said the findings indicate the shape of the face was established early in the history of Homo sapiens, but brain shape, and perhaps brain function, evolved later. But given their modern-looking face and teeth, Hublin said, these people may have blended in today if they simply wore a hat. Hublin did not hazard a guess as to how long ago the very first members of our species appeared, but said it could not have been more than 650,000 years ago, when the evolutionary lineage that led to Homo sapiens split from the one that led to the Neanderthals.” [Source: Will Dunham, Reuters, June 8, 2017]

Ian Sample wrote in The Guardian: “In the first of two papers published in Nature on the researchers describe how they compared the freshly-excavated fossils with those of modern humans, Neanderthals and ancient human relatives that lived up to 1.8 million years ago. Facially, the closest match was with modern humans. The lower jaw was similar to modern Homo sapiens too, but much larger. The most striking difference was the shape of the braincase which was more elongated than that of humans today. It suggests, said Hublin, that the modern brain evolved in Homo sapiens and was not inherited from a predecessor. [Source: Ian Sample, The Guardian, June 7, 2017 |=|]

“Apart from being more stout and muscular, the adults at Jebel Irhoud looked similar to people alive today. “The face of the specimen we found is the face of someone you could meet on the tube in London,” Hublin said. In a second paper, the scientists lay out how they dated the stone tools to between 280,000 and 350,000 years, and a lone tooth to 290,000 years old.

“The remains of more individuals may yet be found at the site. But precisely what they were doing there is unclear. Analysis of the flint tools shows that the stones came not from the local area, but from a region 50 kilometers south of Jebel Irhoud. “Why did they come here? They brought their toolkit with them and they exhausted it,” Hublin said. “The tools they brought with them have been resharpened, resharpened, and resharpened again. They did not produce new tools on the spot. It might be that they did not stay that long, or maybe it was an area they would come to do something specific. We think they were hunting gazelles, there are a lot of gazelle bones, and they were making a lot of fires.”

Faces, Skulls and Brains of Jebel Irhoud People

Despite its modern facial structure, the Jebel Irhoud hominin’s braincase was more primitive, suggesting that the shape of the brain, and possibly cognitive ability, continued to evolve in Homo sapiens after the species was established. Gemma Tarlach wrote in Discover: “The newly described Jebel Irhoud hominins — at least three adults, one adolescent and a child the researchers believe was about 8 years old at time of death — have an intriguing mix of traits. Their faces were essentially ours: “It’s the face of people you could cross in the street today,” says Hublin of the best preserved Jebel Irhoud partial skull. While some of the fossils had larger brow ridges, their facial feature measurements fall within the range of modern humans. [Source: Gemma Tarlach, Discover, June 7, 2017 ^]

“Seen in profile, however, a key difference is apparent: although it had a volume “in the range of modern humans,” according to Hublin, the Jebel Irhoud hominin braincase was lower and more elongated. Based on preserved features of the braincase (the part of the skull that encases, yep, the brain), the researchers believe the Moroccan hominins had a smaller cerebellum than modern humans, though not as small as that of Neanderthals. The cerebellum has been linked to fine motor skills as well as creativity. ^

“Finding early Homo sapiens with modern faces and teeth but more primitive braincases refines our understanding of the actual process of human evolution. “The story of our species in the last 300,000 years is the story of our brain’s evolution,” said Hublin, who added that mutations likely built up over that period, changing the brain’s functional abilities along with its shape and giving the species cognitive advantages in everything from creating better technology to managing social complexities.” ^

Tools and Insights from Jebel Irhoud Man

Gemma Tarlach wrote in Discover: “In addition to the hominin fossils, Jebel Irhoud is home to a number of stone tools, many made from non-local material which suggests a higher degree of intention than more primitive hominin tool-makers. “The thing that characterizes the Middle Stone Age from the time that came before is a shift from large, heavy-duty tools to an emphasis on producing lighter stone flakes that allowed increased efficiency in hunting. Along with an emphasis on pointed forms, there was an emphasis on quality materials,” McPherron explained, adding that the hominins’ apparent ease of using controlled fire also speaks to their fairly advanced cognitive abilities for the time.” [Source: Gemma Tarlach, Discover, June 7, 2017]

Jebel Irhoud tools

Ian Sample wrote in The Guardian: “John McNabb, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton, said: “One of the big questions about the emergence of anatomically modern humans has been did our body plan evolve quickly or slowly. This find seems to suggest the latter. It seems our faces became modern long before our skulls took on the shape they have today. There are some intriguing possibilities here too.The tools the people at Jebel Irhoud were making were based on a knapping technique called Levallois, a sophisticated way of shaping stone tools. The date of 300,000 years ago adds to a growing realisation that Levallois originates a lot earlier than we thought. Is Jebel Irhoud telling us that this new technology is linked to the emergence of the hominin line that will lead to modern humans? Does the new find imply there was more than one hominin lineage in Africa at this time? It really stirs the pot.” [Source: Ian Sample, The Guardian, June 7, 2017 |=|]

“Jessica Thompson, an anthropologist at Emory University in Atlanta, said the new results show just how incredible the Jebel Irhoud site is. “These fossils are the rarest of the rare because the human fossil record from this time period in Africa is so poorly represented. They give us a direct look at what early members of our species looked like, as well as their behaviour. “You might also look twice at the brow ridges if you saw them on a living person. It might not be a face you’d see every day, but you would definitely recognise it as human,” she said. “It really does look like in Africa especially, but also globally, our evolution was characterized by numerous different species all living at the same time and possibly even in the same places.” |=|

Cautions About Jebel Irhoud Man

Ian Sample wrote in The Guardian: “John Shea, an archaeologist at Stony Brook University in New York who was not involved in the study, said he was cautious whenever researchers claimed they had found the oldest of anything. “It’s best not to judge by the big splash they make when they are first announced, but rather to wait and see some years down the line whether the waves from that splash have altered the shoreline,” he said, adding that stone tools can move around in cave sediments and settle in layers of a different age. [Source: Ian Sample, The Guardian, June 7, 2017 |=|]

“Shea was also uneasy with the scientists combining fossils from different individuals, and comparing reconstructions of complete skulls from fragmentary remains. “Such ‘chimeras’ can look very different from the individuals on which they are based,” he said.“For me, claiming these remains are Homo sapiens stretches the meaning of that term a bit,” Shea added. “These humans who lived between 50,000-300,000 years ago are a morphologically diverse bunch. Whenever we find more than a couple of them from the same deposits, such as at Omo Kibish and Herto in Ethiopia or Skhul and Qafzeh in Israel, their morphology is all over the place both within and between samples.” |=|

Jebel area

Well-Preserved 90,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Found on a Moroccan Beach

In 2022, researchers happened upon some very well-preserved 90,000-year-old the footprint near the northern tip of North Africa while studying boulders at a nearby beach, according to a study published January 23, 2024 in the journal Scientific Reports. "Between tides, I said to my team that we should go north to explore another beach," study lead author Mouncef Sedrati, an associate professor of coastal dynamics and geomorphology at the University of Southern Brittany in France, told Live Science. "We were surprised to find the first print. At first, we weren't convinced it was a footprint, but then we found more of the trackway." [Source: Jennifer Nalewicki, Live Science, January 30, 2024]

Live Science reported: Analysis of the site, which is the only known human trackway site of its kind in North Africa and the Southern Mediterranean, revealed two trails containing a total of 85 human footprints stamped into the beach by a group of at least five early modern humans.

The team used optically stimulated luminescence dating, a technique that determines when specific minerals on or near an artifact were last exposed to heat or sunlight. Based on the age of the fine grains of quartz that make up the bulk of the gently sloped beach's sand, researchers determined that a multigenerational group of Homo sapiens walked on the beach roughly 90,000 years ago, creating the pathways. The event took place during the Late Pleistocene, also known as the last ice age, which ended around 11,700 years ago, according to the study.

"We took measurements on-site to determine the length and depth of the prints," Sedrati said. "Based on the foot pressure and size of the footprints, we were able to determine the approximate age of the individuals, which included children, adolescents and adults."

The researchers credit the excellent preservation of the ancient impressions to a number of factors, including the beach's layout and the long reach of the tides for "the final preservation of the footprints," according to the study. "The exceptional thing is the position of the beach on a rocky platform that is covered in clay sediments," Sedrati said. "These sediments create good conditions to preserve the tracks on the sandbar while the tides rapidly buried the beach. That's why the footprints are so well preserved here."

However, the researchers remain uncertain about what the ice age group was doing on the beach, and future analysis of the site could reveal that information. But they'll have to act quickly, as "the ongoing collapse of the rocky shore platform … could lead to its eventual demise," including of the tracks preserved on it, the team wrote in the study. "We hope to learn about the total history of this group of humans and what they were doing there," Sedrati said.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, Nature, phys.org and Natural History magazine

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery NewsNatural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2024