archeologists have discovered the oldest human fossil ever found outside Africa
high on a mountain in northern Israel a team of researchers are searching for
the roots of modern man they find a fossil buried deep beneath the ground
and later investigations suggest that it's the oldest evidence of Homo sapiens
ever found outside of Africa this being the case this discovery could have
astounding implications for history as we have here on to known it millions of
years ago our planet was populated by a diverse range of creatures but somewhere
down the line the great apes emerged some of these creatures went on to
evolve into the orangutan z-- and chimpanzees that we can see today but
others evolved in a different way over time the homo emerged the
categorization of species that would eventually spawn modern man and after a
number of our early relatives had evolved the humans we know today finally
developed but all these thousands of years later we still today understand
little about how it all took place in fact what scientists know about human
evolution is changing all the time after all there are no written records to draw
upon and relics such as tools can be difficult to date however experts are
able to shine a light into the darkness by studying the fossilized remains of
early humans through fossils scientists are able to understand more about our
species and until recently they had led them to believe that modern humans
emerged some 200,000 years ago however a skull discovered in Morocco in
2017 was dated to some 100,000 years before that so while scientists have not
been sure when early humans evolved they have long believed that they knew where
they came from experts have broadly agreed that the first Homo sapiens
emerged somewhere on the African continent and they then spread out
across the globe this idea began to take hold in 1871
when Charles Darwin suggested that Africa was the cradle of human life
writing in the Descent of Man Darwin pointed towards the fact that
gorillas and chimpanzees two of mankind's closest relatives still lived
on the continent during his own time from this II reason that it could also
have been where Homo sapiens first emerged however when the remains of
other homo species were found around Europe and Asia Darwin's ideas were
dismissed and then in 1924 something incredible was discovered the fossilized
skull of a boy thought to have died more than two million years before dubbed the
tonk child the remains were eventually identified as belonging to
Australopithecus africanus a supposed early forbear to modern humans over time
excavations in the area revealed more fossils similar to the Taung child and
eventually the scientific community came to accept that the first humans had
likely emerged on the African continent just as Darwin had suggested and for
years this theory of human evolution remained dominant around the world
however thousands of miles away in Israel a team of archaeologists have
stumbled across something that could change that narrative for good back in
2001 professor mina weinstein Avron from
israel's University of Haifa and professor Israel Hershkovitz from tel
aviv university joined forces and together they set out to work on an
ambitious excavation dubbed the miss Leah cave project the dig aim to
excavate a site high up on Mount Carmel in northern Israel many experts believe
that this region was settled in Paleolithic times and in miss Leah cave
itself archaeologists had found layers of history dating as far back as up to
400 thousand years moreover archaeologists believe that miss Leah
had once been populated by early humans in fact they'd previously determined it
had been inhabited between 250,000 and 160,000 years in the past
apparently dating procedures performed on pieces of Flint had suggested this
timeframe which would see it fall under early middle Paleolithic period at Miz
Lea Weinstein Avron and Hershkovitz hoped to find the holy grail of
paleoanthropology evidence that would shed light on the origins of Homo
sapiens nothing however could have prepared them for what they would
uncover as Weinstein evarin put it to the Times of Israel in 2018 we found
something even more surprising for 10 or so years archaeologists excavated the
region around miss Leah and slowly they began to build up a fascinating picture
of ancient life in the mountains of Israel for example a huge cachet of some
60-thousand tools was recovered shedding light on how early humans lived and
worked forged from flint the tools represented a number of different stages
of human development and while the archaeologists found primitive axes
among the relics they also uncovered more advanced pieces such as knives and
projectiles amazingly experts also discovered evidence of how the tools had
once been used the new zoological data from ms lea cave particularly the
abundance of meat bearing limb bones displaying filleting cut marks and the
acquisition of prime aged prey demonstrate that early middle
Paleolithic people possessed developed hunting capabilities researchers
reported in a 2007 article for the Journal of human evolution
moreover archaeologists discovered a vast array of animal remains at the site
they had a delicatessen in the cave Weinstein have run quipped to The Times
of Israel in fact she noted that meat from creatures such as Arak wild boar
and hair were all present as well as ostrich eggs they supped on ham and eggs
she continued however the most exciting discovery was that a jawbone this had
been dug up from the earth in 2002 apparently the bone was uncovered by a
freshman student the first time he had attended one of the group's digs buried
in what's known as petrified soil the fossil was carefully taken from the cave
and sent to a laboratory there the painstaking task of removing layers of
sediment from the find began it's a frustrating process that takes a lot of
time Hershkovitz explained to The Times of Israel it must be done step by step
in order to not damage the fossil it took about a year just to clean it up
and prepare it for study eventually the discovery was revealed in all its glory
and the archaeologists were amazed by what they'd found to their surprise the
fossilized jawbone appeared to be that of a modern human however there were
some problems with this conclusion apparently the discovery had been made
within layers believed to date to the early Middle Paleolithic period
specifically between 250 and 140 thousand years ago so given that the
team felt they could confidently assume that the fossil was more than a hundred
twenty thousand years old however up until then the earliest evidence of Homo
sapiens outside Africa had been dated to between ninety thousand and a hundred
twenty thousand years ago so and they broken this record with their startling
discovery interestingly previous fossils had also
been discovered in Israel in another cave close to Mount Carmel there had
also been past discoveries at a different site around 30 miles away at
Mount precipice near Nazareth but despite this background the team found
it difficult to convince others of the legitimacy of their incredible find
it looks so modern that it took us five years to convince people because they
couldn't believe their eyes Weinstein Evren told the New York Times in 2018 so
the team embarked on a quest to secure a concrete date for their find and even
though the fossil only consisted of an upper jawbone and eight teeth it
revealed a large amount of information apparently one of the first steps was to
send the fossil to the University of Vienna this is where paleoanthropologist
Gerhard W Weber runs a virtual laboratory their experts set about
determining whether the jawbone had come from a homo sapiens or a form of
Neanderthal in his laboratory Weber produced a 3d model of the fossil
allowing him to see its features in greater detail moreover he was able to
virtually strip away the teeths outer layers and with that data he compared
the jawbone to other Homo sapiens remains as well as examples from other
homo species eventually Weber concluded that the jaw bones characteristics match
those of a homo sapien it's not a little bit modern or on the border of being
modern he told the New York Times it's a really modern human and following this
thorough research other experts began to agree however that wasn't the end of the
dating process after that researchers in Israel Australia and France got to work
on the fossil through enamel and dentin from the teeth themselves as well as
tools found near the fossil and sediment from the jaw bone they were able to
learn more about the ancient find eventually the experts revealed a
startling date for the fossil and just as the team had suspected its age was in
line with other discoveries at the site in fact the human that the jaw bone
belonged to is thought to have lived between 177,000 and 194 thousand years
ago this thing is as old as we thought it
was and it was probably the earliest Homo Sapien Out of Africa
ever found anthropologists broath am qualms from New York's Binghamton
University till the new york times it's not often you can make a superlative
statement but in this case we can in January 2018 the team were ready to
reveal their discovery to the world and although their findings were unusual
they're not the only experts with evidence supporting a different
narrative of human evolution in fact some believe that Homo sapiens may have
existed in Eurasia as many as two hundred twenty thousand years in the
past furthermore some experts believe that those early humans might have mixed
their genes with the inner thoughts it's long been suspected that different
species of homo interbred with each other however the new dates suggested by
this fossil have forced archaeologists to reconsider the nature of those
relationships it means modern humans were potentially
meeting and interacting during a longer period of time with other archaic human
groups providing more opportunity for cultural and biological exchanges qualm
who was co-creator of the research told The Guardian in 2018 however that wasn't
the only revelation up until recently most experts believe that Homo sapiens
first left Africa around 60,000 years ago earlier remains had of course
previously been found in Israel but it had been theorized that these were left
over from unsuccessful attempts at migration in fact in 2015
archaeologists announced that they'd found human teeth believed to be a
hundred thousand years old in China this is thousands of miles from where homo
sapiens are thought to have emerged however the recent study of the ms leah
jawbone could represent the earliest discovery of modern humans outside of
Africa yet according to some experts findings like
these suggest that early humans spread across the planet in a series of
migrations rather than in one push what Miz Leah tells us is that modern humans
left Africa not 100,000 years ago but 200,000 years ago Hershkovitz told the
Guardian this is revolutionary in the way we understand the evolution of our
species moreover experts believe that early
humans were not merely passing through the region around Mount Carmel in fact
evidence suggests that the site was inhabited for an extended period it was
a central train station people were coming and going through
this land corridor from one continent to another and it was occupied all the time
Hershkovitz told the journal Nature in 2018 it's believed that the area might
have presented a challenging habitat for early humans would like the dry spells
interspersed with wetter periods however some experts think that the MS Lea
fossil could be evidence that Israel was once part of a bigger region that
bridged the gap between Asia and North America
but while the MS Lea fossil has sparked an interesting debate some have
expressed doubt over its true age for example there have been concerns that
multiple x-rays could have skewed radiation readings furthermore it's been
suggested that material in the jaw bone could have further influenced the dating
process however the team has defended their discovery pointing out that the
fossil was found alongside tools dating from a similar era and if their findings
are correct the discovery could have huge implications for the future of
paleoanthropology as Hershkovitz told science in 2018 if our species was in
Israel 200,000 years ago it suggests our species is very old
not just 300,000 years old but older