Fossils recovered from an old mine on a desolate mountain in Morocco have rocked one of the most enduring foundations of the human story: that Homo sapiens arose in a cradle of humankind in East Africa 200,000 years ago.

Archaeologists unearthed the bones of at least five people at Jebel Irhoud, a former barite mine 100km west of Marrakesh, in excavations that lasted years. They knew the remains were old, but were stunned when dating tests revealed that a tooth and stone tools found with the bones were about 300,000 years old.

“My reaction was a big ‘wow’,” said Jean-Jacques Hublin, a senior scientist on the team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. “I was expecting them to be old, but not that old.”

Hublin said the extreme age of the bones makes them the oldest known specimens of modern humans and poses a major challenge to the idea that the earliest members of our species evolved in a “Garden of Eden” in East Africa one hundred thousand years later.

“This gives us a completely different picture of the evolution of our species. It goes much further back in time, but also the very process of evolution is different to what we thought,” Hublin told the Guardian. “It looks like our species was already present probably all over Africa by 300,000 years ago. If there was a Garden of Eden, it might have been the size of the continent.”

Full report: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/07/oldest-homo-sapiens-bones-ever-found-shake-foundations-of-the-human-story

Very interesting, thanks. Will have a full read later.

Wikipedia has “Early Modern Human” originating 300,000 years ago. But first early modern human fossils from 100,000 years later, confirming the story in the OP.

From Wikipedia:

The oldest fossil remains of anatomically modern humans are the Omo remains found in modern-day East Africa, which date to 195,000 years ago and include two partial skulls as well as arm, leg, foot and pelvis bones. Other fossils include the proposed Homo sapiens idaltu from Herto in Ethiopia that are almost 160,000 years old and the Skhul hominids from Israel, which are 90,000 years old. The oldest human remains from which an entire genome has been extracted belongs to Ust’-Ishim man, who lived about 45,000 years ago in Western Siberia

I note a certain resemblance to Neanderthal skulls, the heavy brow ridges, the way that there is very little skull above the eyes but it’s exceptionally deep from front to back. Also forward protruding jaw. Could this be a joint ancestor of Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis?

mollwollfumble said:

I note a certain resemblance to Neanderthal skulls, the heavy brow ridges, the way that there is very little skull above the eyes but it’s exceptionally deep from front to back. Also forward protruding jaw. Could this be a joint ancestor of Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis?

I think they ruled that out, although the skulls were closer in age to the divergence.

PermeateFree said:

I think they ruled that out, although the skulls were closer in age to the divergence.

Missing link?

mollwollfumble said:

PermeateFree said:

I think they ruled that out, although the skulls were closer in age to the divergence.

Missing link?

Homo Farnsworth perhaps

mollwollfumble said:

PermeateFree said:

I think they ruled that out, although the skulls were closer in age to the divergence.

Missing link?

Certainly another link.

“Fossils recovered from an old mine on a desolate mountain in Morocco have rocked one of the most enduring foundations of the human story: that Homo sapiens arose in a cradle of humankind in East Africa 200,000 years ago.”

Sorry, but that’s BS. Not only is it not an “enduring foundation”. It hasn’t even been a possibility.

“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,”

Um, no. A face like that would draw serious stares from passers by.

“Facially, the closest match was with modern humans.”

Yes, but there’s a world of difference between “closest” and identical. It’s more similar to Homo sapiens than to Homo naladi from South Africa. And arguably closer to Homo sapiens than to Homo neanderthalensis.

“is unconvinced that modern humans lived all over Africa so long ago”

Agree. We’ve seen other human ancestors that were confined to perhaps 20% of the continent.

““For me, claiming these remains are Homo sapiens stretches the meaning of that term a bit,”

Good, only a little bit, but definitely a bit.

“These fossils are the rarest of the rare because the human fossil record from this time period in Africa is so poorly represented”

True.

mollwollfumble said:

“Fossils recovered from an old mine on a desolate mountain in Morocco have rocked one of the most enduring foundations of the human story: that Homo sapiens arose in a cradle of humankind in East Africa 200,000 years ago.”

Sorry, but that’s BS. Not only is it not an “enduring foundation”. It hasn’t even been a possibility.

“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,”

Um, no. A face like that would draw serious stares from passers by.

“Facially, the closest match was with modern humans.”

Yes, but there’s a world of difference between “closest” and identical. It’s more similar to Homo sapiens than to Homo naladi from South Africa. And arguably closer to Homo sapiens than to Homo neanderthalensis.

“is unconvinced that modern humans lived all over Africa so long ago”

Agree. We’ve seen other human ancestors that were confined to perhaps 20% of the continent.

““For me, claiming these remains are Homo sapiens stretches the meaning of that term a bit,”

Good, only a little bit, but definitely a bit.

“These fossils are the rarest of the rare because the human fossil record from this time period in Africa is so poorly represented”

True.

Your concerns are not with the facts, but more with the flourish of the author.

PermeateFree said:

Your concerns are not with the facts, but more with the flourish of the author.

Well spotted!

Yes, that’s exactly correct. The article linked in the OP gets better as it gets further from the heading. By the end of the article I have no quibbles at all.

for atleast a decade i’ve been of impression modern humans may have originated as far back as 500,000 years