Human Fossil Findings 350 Thousand Years Trigger Human Origin Questions

The first modern humans on Earth may have appeared about 350,000 years ago, following the latest fossil finds. This means 170 thousand years earlier than previously estimated. Ancient DNA analysis has enabled scientists to trace back the descendants of people from South Africa.

The study aims to know when exactly our ancestors split from other hominim species. As a result, their findings consistently show the date of the initial divergence, which is between 350 thousand and 260 thousand years ago.

How and when modern man first emerged as a species is a big question unanswered in paleoanthropology because its fossil record is incomplete. Today, the oldest human remains we have are 195,000 years old. But this fossil is not necessarily the first Homo sapiens.

In a study published in Science , a team of researchers led by Marlize Lombard of the University of Johannesburg, South Africa saw the remains of seven individuals living in KwaZulu-Natal aged between 2300 and 300 years ago. Three of them lived during the Stone Age, and the other four lived 300 to 500 years ago.

One of the fossils known as the Bay of Ballito children is the descendants of hunter gatherers and lived before migrants in South Africa. This is evidenced by the DNA that is found to have not been mixed with genetics from other humans from different parts of Africa or Eurasia.

The findings of the Ballito Bay child fossils were then combined with other individual fossils and compared with other ancient genomic examples from different times and places. The results show modern humans split from the previous group between 350 thousand and 260 thousand years ago.

"This means that modern humans have emerged earlier than previously thought," said Mattias Jakobsson, a population geneticist from Uppsala University in a statement.

Their estimated time also matches the records of the fossils. At least two or three other Homo species are known to have lived in southern Africa so far. The discovery of five Homo sapiens fossils over the age of 300,000 this year raises the big question about where humanity began.

Following the fossil findings, study authors from the University of Uppsala, Carina Schlebusch said, "The evidence of paleo-anthropology and genetics increasingly shows the origins of modern human anatomy in Africa, Homo sapiens does not originate from one place in Africa, but may have evolved from the older in some parts of the continent with gene flow between groups from different places. "