An enigmatic skull suggests that our human species reached Europe 210,000 years ago

The new study focuses on the damaged remains of two skulls – named Apidima 1 and Apidima 2 – found a few inches apart in a crevasse. Initially, the scientists assumed that the skulls were the same age because they were found together. However, researchers have recently used laboratory techniques that analyzed the radioactive decay of uranium in trace samples and concluded that individuals belonged to different eras. The tests indicated that Apidima 1 was about 210,000 years old and Apidima 2, about 170,000 years old.

These dates contained a shocking twist to the consensus on early humans in Europe. Researchers have used various methods to model the appearance of a skull before being broken and deformed over the course of thousands of centuries. Apidima 2, the younger skull, clearly resembles Neanderthal man, which fits well with the idea that Neanderthals – Homo Neanderthalensis – were the first dominant men in Europe at this time of prehistory.

Scientists have discovered that the old skull, Apidima 1, did not seem to belong to a Neanderthal. It looks more like a start Homo sapiens, they report.

This skull does not have much – just a part of the back of the skull. But it has a rounded shape and other features that researchers equate with early modern humans.

Such an early presence of the first modern humans in Europe is not implausible. Last year, a different team of researchers reported the discovery in a cave in Israel of a bone and jaw of Homo sapiens from an individual who lived there. about 177,000 to 194,000 years ago. The new study suggests that the Levant and Turkey could have been flyways allowing early modern humans to reach southeastern Europe.

If this new interpretation is correct, the author of the authors, Apidima 1, is "the oldest known presence of Homo sapiens in Eurasia, which indicates that early modern humans scattered out of Africa, much earlier and much further than previously thought. "

This discovery also suggests that early modern humans have been in contact with Neanderthals, which went extinct about 40,000 years ago, after a group of modern humans (often called Cro-Magnons) arrived in force in Western Eurasia.

An extraordinary claim like this is accompanied by inherent challenges. It is essentially a single data point: a partial skull, damaged and deformed, with "a lack of archaeological context", to use the terms of the new document. There is nothing else: no stone tool, no sign of burial, nothing that suggests modern human behavior. The claim would obviously benefit from a second fossil of Homo sapiens of the same age somewhere in this part of the world.

"Of course, it would be good to find more," said lead author Katerina Harvati of Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, Germany, during a teleconference with journalists. "We intend to try to watch."

Several paleontologists who read the newspaper came back skeptical. Rick Potts, director of the human origins program at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, said the new claim is a one-time document that differs considerably from what has already been documented. That's not to say that it's wrong, though.

"Of course, there must be a moment when you find the first. But we do not know it until we find many examples of that, "he said.

Melanie Lee Chang, evolutionary biologist at Portland State University, specializing in human evolution, echoed this sentiment: "At present, it's an outlier . There may be lots of specimens in cabinets that people have not looked at for a while and will come back and reinterpret that way. But I am not willing to sign all their conclusions here. "

John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, said genetic evidence has shown that Neanderthals possessed African ancestor genes some 200,000 years ago. a lot of sense. "

But he also sounded a warning. It's strange, he said, that two skulls of different ages are found side by side. The researchers estimated that the fossils were washed in a crevasse and then embedded in sediments hardened around 150,000 years ago. Hawks said: "It's a strange scenario to have two human skulls that are so close to each other and whose age is so different, and that's me. makes you want more evidence. "

The Apidima 2 skull (on the right) and its reconstruction (on the left). Apidima 2 has characteristic characteristics of Neanderthals. (Copyright Katerina Harvati, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.)

Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum of London, co-author of the article on nature, acknowledged that it was a "new exciting discovery" for which skepticism is appropriate to the origin. "We do not have the frontal bone, the forehead lines, the face, the teeth or the chin, none of them could have been less" modern ", he said in an email. added that the team had tested their reconstruction efforts in multiple ways and that the fossil "shows the high and rounded skull that is typical only of H. sapiens. "

He added that it would be helpful to find stone tools associated with Homo sapiens. "If we correctly interpreted the Apidima evidence, the manual work of these first H. sapiens must be present elsewhere in the European record, "he said.

But the finer details of human prehistory, including the fate of groups that have dispersed but apparently disappeared, have become complicated with each new discovery. Not half a century ago, paleoanthropologists had assumed a linear, linear evolution of humans – but many species of hominids had coexisted for millions of years before a single species was substituted. to all others.

"We are the last biped status of what was a very, very diverse, evolutionary tree," said Potts.

Read more:

A shocking archaeologist: a study says humans reached the Americas 130,000 years ago

The skeleton of the 12,000-year-old girl could solve an archaeological mystery

From 2018: scientists have discovered the discovery of the oldest fossil Homo sapiens outside Africa.