Early Modern Humans in Africa

Home | Category: First Modern Humans (400,000-20,000 Years Ago)

Jebel Irhoud skull

Before the discovery of 300,000-year-old modern human fossils in Morocco in the late 2010s, it was thought the first modern humans evolved in eastern or southern Africa about 200,000 years ago. Omo Kibish on the Omo River in southwestern Ethiopia for many years was regarded as the oldest modern human site. Modern human bones found there in the 1960s — including part of two skulls and some skeleton — were initially dated to 130,000 years but later redated to 195,000 years ago using the latest dating techniques and redated again to be 233,000 years old . Some question the dates and the dating method. Bone fragments dated to 120,000 have been found southern Africa. Other modern fossils dated around 100,000 years ago have been found.

Genetic markers that are thought to date back to the origins of modern humans are most common among the San people (Bushmen) of southern Africa, the Biaka pygmies of central Africa and some east African tribes. The San and two of the East African tribes speak clicks languages, which some surmised might be the world’s oldest languages.

After 800,000 years ago, fluctuations in heat and aridity became more extreme in Africa. Around 300,000 years ago, finely crafted stone tools appeared and this has been coupled with the emergence of modern Homo sapiens in Africa around the same time According to one theory arid conditions in Africa during an ice age may have forced humans into isolated pockets near water sources. Separated by mountain ranges and deserts, the theory goes, individual populations of archaic “Homo sapiens” developed independently. By the time the glaciers receded and plant food and water was more plentiful, “ Homo sapiens” had emerged.

Norman Owen-Smith in The Conversation: Despite their hunting prowess Homo sapiens had declined to precarious numbers in Africa by around 130,000 years ago, following an especially severe ice age. Genetic evidence indicates that the entire human population across the continent shrank to fewer than 40,000 individuals, spread thinly from Morocco in the north to the Cape in the far south. One remnant survived by inhabiting caves along the southern Cape coast, exploiting marine resources. This reliable food source fostered further advances in tool technology, and even the earliest art. The use of bows and arrows as weapons, along with spears, probably contributed crucially to the expansion of humans beyond Africa around 60,000 years ago. They spread onward through Asia and into Europe, displacing the Neanderthals. [Source: Norman Owen-Smith, Emeritus Research Professor of African Ecology, University of the Witwatersrand, The Conversation, January 26, 2023]

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 ; Hall of Human Origins American Museum of Natural History amnh.org/exhibitions ; The Bradshaw Foundation bradshawfoundation.com ; Britannica Human Evolution britannica.com ; Human Evolution handprint.com ; University of California Museum of Anthropology ucmp.berkeley.edu; John Hawks' Anthropology Weblog johnhawks.net/ ; New Scientist: Human Evolution newscientist.com/article-topic/human-evolution

Earliest Evidence of Modern Humans in Africa

Jebel Irhoud tools

Country — Date — Place — Notes
Morocco — 300,000 years before present —Jebel Irhoud —Anatomically modern human remains of eight individuals dated 300,000 years old, making them the oldest remains ever found.
Ethiopia — 195,000 years before present — Omo Kibish Formation — The Omo remains found in 1967 near the Ethiopian Kibish Mountains, have been dated as ca. 195,000 years old. Sudan — 140,000–160,000 years before present — Singa — Anatomically modern human discovered 1924 with rare temporal bone pathology [Source: Wikipedia +]

South Africa — 125,000 years before present — Klasies River Caves — Remains found in the Klasies River Caves in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa show signs of human hunting. There is some debate as to whether these remains represent anatomically modern humans.
Democratic Republic of the Congo — 90,000 years before present — Katanda, Upper Semliki River — Semliki harpoon heads carved from bone.
Egypt — 50,000–80,000 years before present — Taramasa Hill — Skeleton of 8- to 10-year-old child discovered in 1994.+

The Ngaloba Skull (Laetoli Hominid 18, LH 18 was discovered in 1976 in Ngaloba, Laetoli, Tanzania. Dated to be around 120,000 years old (but debated), the skull is transitional between Homo heidelbergensis and early modern Homo sapiens. It has a number of primitive features but also has some modern characteristics such as a reduced brow ridge and smaller facial features. The late date of this specimen indicates that archaic humans lived alongside modern populations for some time. [Source: Australian Museum]

Jebel Irhoud Fossils (300,000 Years Old) — Oldest Known Modern Humans — from Morocco

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 in on a desolate mountain in Jebel Irhoud, 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. ^

Florisbad Skull (260,000 Years Old) from South Africa

The Florisbad Skull is an important hominin dated to 259,000 years ago (±35,000 years). Designated as either late Homo heidelbergensis or early Homo sapiens, it was discovered in 1932 by T. F. Dreyer at the Florisbad site, Free State Province, South Africa. The skull was dated using enamel samples from the tooth found with the skull and electron spin resonance dating. [Source: Wikipedia]

Earliest modern humans in Africa

The Florisbad Skull was initially classified as Homo helmei (Africanthropus) by Dreyer in 1935. Also in 1935, C. U. Ariëns Kappers noted the close resemblance of the fossil to Homo sapiens. M. R. Drennan (1935, 1937) emphasized its resemblance to Neanderthals, proposing his classification as Homo florisbadensis (helmei). Scientists of the 1950s to 1970s have drawn parallels to archaic African human fossils such as Saldanha and Kabwe crania (now assigned to Homo heidelbergensis). Clarke (1985) compared it to the Ngaloba Skull (Laetoli Hominid 18, LH 18) and Omo 2, described below, which are now considered early anatomically modern human fossils.

In 2016 Chris Stringer argued that the Florisbad Skull, along with the Jebel Irhoud and Eliye Springs specimens, belong to an archaic or "early" form of Homo sapiens. The Florisbad Skull was also classified as Homo sapiens by Hublin et al. (in 2017), in part on the basis of the similar Jebel Irhoud finds from Morocco. Lahr and Mounier (2019) also classify the Florisbad Skull as an example of early Homo sapiens, which they suggest arose between 350,000 and 260,000 years ago from the merging of populations in East and South Africa. Scerri et al. (2018) offer the fossil as evidence for "African multiregionalism", the view of a complex speciation of Homo sapiens widely dispersed across Africa, with substantial hybridization between Homo sapiens and more divergent hominins in different regions.

The Florisbad Skull belonged to a specimen within the size range of modern humans, with a brain volume larger than modern averages, at 1,400 cubic centimeters. The skull was also found with Middle Stone Age tools. The fossil skull is a fragment; preserved are the right side of the face, most of the frontal bone, and some of the maxilla, along with portions of the roof and sidewalls. A single, upper right, third molar was also found with the adult skull. The skull also showed extensive porotic hyperostosis as well as a large number of healed lesions, including pathological drainage or vascular tracts. There are also a couple of large puncture marks and scratch-like marks which may reflect hyena chewing.

The Florisbad skull was part of an assemblage of mostly carnivore prey remains, caught in vertical spring vents. It shows damage by hyena chewing. The spring vents were later sealed by deposits. The wider Florisbad site has also produced a large and diverse fauna, including springhares, rabbits, rodents and reptiles.The large mammal component of the site suggests an open grassland with a body of water in the immediate vicinity.

Omo I and II (233,000 Years Ago) in Ethiopia

The Omo remains are a collection of hominin bones discovered between 1967 and 1974 at the Omo Kibish sites near the Omo River, in Omo National Park in south-western Ethiopia. The bones were recovered by a scientific team from the Kenya National Museums directed by Richard Leakey and others. The remains from Kamoya's Hominid Site (KHS) were called Omo I and those from Paul I. Abell's Hominid Site (PHS) were called Omo II. In 2022, a study by Vidal et al. found an earlier age for the Omo fossils than previously reported, revising the date assigned to them as, a minimum date of approximately 233,000 years old. [Source: Wikipedia]

For some time, Omo I and Omo were regarded as the oldest known fossils classified as Homo sapiens. The Florisbad Skull is older, but its classification as Homo sapiens was disputed for a long time. With the discovery of the 300,000-year-old Jebel Irhoud fossils in Morocco and the classification of the Florisbad Skull as Homo sapiens, this is no longer the case.

copy of a Omo Kibish skull

The Omo bones found include two partial skulls, four jaws, a legbone, approximately two hundred teeth, and several other fossilized parts. Both of the specimens, Omo I and Omo II, are classified as anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens), but they differ from each other in morphological traits. The Omo I fossils indicate more modern traits, while studies of the postcranial remains of Omo II indicate an overall modern human morphology with some primitive features. The fossils were found in a layer of tuff, between a lower, older geologic layer named Member I and a higher, newer layer dubbed Member III. The Omo I and Omo II hominin fossils were taken from similar stratigraphic levels above Member I.

Parts of the fossils are the earliest to have been classified by Leakey as Homo sapiens. In 2004, the geological layers around the fossils were dated, with the age of the "Kibish hominids" estimated at 195,000 (±5,000). Because of the very limited fauna and the few stone artifacts that were found at the sites when the original Omo remains were discovered, the provenance and estimated age of the Kibish hominids are uncertain. About 30 years after the original finds, a detailed stratigraphic analysis of the area surrounding the fossils was conducted. The Member I layer was argon-dated to 195,000 years ago, and the (higher layer) Member III was dated to 105,000 years ago.

Numerous recent lithic records verify the tool technology from Members I and III to the Middle Stone Age. The lower layer, Member I, (below the fossils) is considerably older than the 160,000-year-old Herto remains designated as Homo sapiens idaltu. The Omo region at the time of Omo I and II is considered very based on increased flow of the Nile River at that time, into which the Omo River flows. After 185,000 years ago conditions were very dry.

Is Omo I the Oldest Homo Sapien

Omo I was initially dated to around 200,000 years old, but research published in in Nature in January 2022, showed it was at least 230,000 years old. According to USA Today: “Over a four-year period, a team of international scientists attempted to date all of the major volcanic eruptions in the Ethiopian Rift in eastern Africa. Céline Vidal, a volcanologist from the University of Cambridge and lead author of the research, said the fossils were below a thick layer of volcanic ash, but the ash was "too fine-grained" to date with radiometric techniques. If the volcanic eruptions could be accurately dated, so would the remains. [Source: Jordan Mendoza, USA Today, January 17, 2022]

The team took "fingerprints" from the site: rock samples from volcanic deposits broken down to sub-millimeter size. "Each eruption has its own fingerprint — its own evolutionary story below the surface, which is determined by the pathway the magma followed," Vidal said in a statement. "Once you’ve crushed the rock, you free the minerals within, and then you can date them, and identify the chemical signature of the volcanic glass that holds the minerals together."

Aurélien Mounier from the Musée de l’Homme in Paris and co-author of the paper, said Omo I has "unequivocal modern human characteristics," such as a tall, spherical cranium and chin. There is uncertainty as to when modern humans appeared on Earth. Fossils found in the Sahara Desert in 2017 were more than 300,000 years old, but Mounier told Reuters the fossils "do not possess some of the key morphological features that define our species," so there are questions whether they are linked to modern humans or another species related to humans. "The new date estimate, de facto, makes it the oldest unchallenged Homo sapiens in Africa," Mounier said.

Herto Man (160,000 Years Old) from Ethiopia

Herto skull

Herto Man refers to the remains of modern humans (Homo sapiens) discovered in 1997 in the Middle Awash Afar region of Ethiopia, The skulls of two adults and a child were found near the village of Herto, 225 kilometers northeast of Addis Ababa, and dated using argon–argon dating to be between 160,000 and 154,000 years old — 60,000 years older than the previously confirmed oldest known modern human fossils at the time of their discovery. With a few minor exceptions the skulls are exactly like the skulls of modern humans that live today: the midfaces are broad and the brow ridges are less prominent than in older hominins. [Source: Jamie Shreeve, National Geographic, July 2010; Wikipedia]

One Herto Man skull had a volume of 1,450 cubic centimeters, which makes it larger than the average skull of humans living today. A second less complete skull found later at the site might be even larger. The discovery was announced in 2003. One reason the announcement came so late was that many of the bones were found in fragments and they took years to assemble.

The discovery of Herto Man was especially significant at the time, falling within a long gap in the fossil record between 300,000 and 100,000 years ago. A remarkably complete large skull was found by a team led by Giday WoldeGabriel, an Ethiopian who is a geologist at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico. The skull and bones were dated using pumice and obsidian and other volcanic rocks found with the fossils. The skull is some of the best evidence that modern humans first evolved around 200,000 years ago.

The initial find and further excavation yielded a total of 12 individuals. They include: 1) BOU-VP-16/1, a nearly complete skull missing the left skullcap; 2) BOU-VP-16/2, skull fragments; 3) BOU-VP-16/3, a parietal bone fragment; 4) BOU-VP-16/4, a parietal fragment; 5) BOU-VP-16/5, a nearly complete skull of a 6- or 7-year old; 6) BOU-VP-16/6, a right upper molar; 7) BOU-VP-16/7, a parietal fragment; 8) BOU-VP-16/18, parietal fragments; 9) BOU-VP-16/42, an upper premolar; and 10) BOU-VP-16/43, a parietal fragment.

Is Herto Man a Modern Human Like Us

Anthropologists Tim D. White, Berhane Asfaw, David DeGusta and others initially classified Herto Man as a new Homo sapiens subspecies — Homo sapiens idaltu — that was intermediary morph between Archaic Homo sapiens (Homo heidelbergensis or Homo rhodesiensis") and present-day Homo s. sapiens. British physical anthropologist Chris Stringer disputes the Homo sapiens idaltu categorization, arguing the Herto Man fossils are similar to Late Pleistocene Australasian homo sapien specimens. White et al. stood their ground and still consider Herto Man to be "clearly distinct". In 2011, American anthropologists Kyle Lubsen and Robert Corruccini compared Herto Man fossils with fossils from around the same time in Israel (Skhul 5 from Es-Skhul Cave) reported these fossils are similar to each other.

Similar to "anatomically modern human", the Herto skull has a high cranial vault (a raised forehead), an overall globular shape in side-view, and a flat face. The skull has a projecting brow ridge, weakly curved parietal bones, and a strongly flexed occipital at the back of the skull. These traits are well within the range of variation of modern humans. Compared to the average present-day human skull, the Herto skull is notably long and has overall large dimensions, although the cheekbones are relatively weak.

Those that argue Herto Man is not modern human point to its long face and various traits found in back of the skull that are like those found in older “Homo” species. They also point out that the stone tools he used were not much different from those used 100,000 years earlier. Additionally there is no evidence of beads, or artwork or other advances that have characterized other early modern human sites.

Herto Man Food, Tools — and Ritualistic Cannibalism?

Herto Man produced many stone tools which can fit into the vaguely defined "Transitional Acheulean" — the long-lasting cultural tradition with both characteristically Acheulean (made by archaic humans) and Middle Stone Age (made by modern humans) tools. They seem to have been butchering mainly hippo, but also bovines, in a lakeside environment. .

Large cleavers and other flaked stone tools used to butcher hippos and other animals were found with the Herto human fossils. Many animal bones at the site had cut marks from tools. The presence of snail shells and beach sand indicates the animals were butchered near a lake and because no evidence of fire was found at these places it is surmised they lived elsewhere.

African and Israeli archaic and early modern Homo sapiens crania (replicas) Top (L to R): 1) Florisbad, 2) Jebel Irhoud 1, 3) Jebel Irhoud 2 (original), 4) Eliye Springs, Guomde (reversed), Omo 2. Bottom (L to R): 1) Omo 1, 2) Herto (original, reversed), 3) Ngaloba, Singa, 4) Skhul 5, Qafzeh 9.

The three most complete skulls (including the one of a 6- to 7-year-old child) bear manmade cut marks and other alterations, which could be evidence of mortuary practices. The skull of the child was defleshed after death. Cut marks on the skull indicate the the skin, muscles and blood vessels were removed and lines were scraped on the skull, probably with an obsidian tool. The cut marks indicate that the bone was still fresh when it was done. This and the careful way it was done suggests that there was something more going on than mere cannibalism. The surface of the skull has a polished surface, which suggests repeated handling. Perhaps it was a greatly treasured relic. It was found with no other bones, possibly because it was separated from the body and buried in some kind of special funeral rite.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons except Earliest modern humans in Africa from Science magazine and skull comparison, Stringer, Researchgate

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

Last updated June 2024