Africans are the first humans

Skulls of oldest known humans found in Africa

 

 

THE PRIDE OF AFRICA ...this is definitively the answer to the question of whether Homo sapiens evolved from Africa   - Dr Berhane Asfaw

 

June 12, 2003

 

The Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture have announced plans to establish modern museum that displays the evolution of human beings. Minister Teshome Toga said the Museum would exhibit human evolutionary history spanning from 5.8 million years ago to the currently announced discovery dated at 160,000 years ago.

 

He said the government would continue to support research activities in that area adding that study was being conducted to put research at the service of the country's development findings in addition to their scientific value.

 

Dr. Berhane Asfaw, an Ethiopian Scientist who also discovered one of the three fossils said Ethiopia has full sequence of human history and evolution. He said the discovery of the earliest Homo sapiens would push Homo sapien history by more than 50,000 years back. Explaining on the material Culture of the Homo Sapien Edaltu, Dr. Yonas Beyene, Archeologist with the Middle Awash Research Group that discovered the new fossils said the first Homo sapiens used Acheulian stone tool technology and had spiritual belief as well.

 

Dr. Berhane Asfaw stated, this is the definitive answer to whether humans evolved from Africa... Ethiopia is the Garden of Eden. The whole history of human evolution is here. These African fossils are now the world’s oldest near modern humans."

 

The Herto skulls may therefore mark the earliest known example of conceptual thinking - the sophisticated behaviour that sets us apart from all other animals. They are almost five times older than those found in Europe, and the oldest ever direct predecessors of humans.

 

The latest finds - which scientists have named 'Idaltu', meaning 'elder' has a slightly larger head and brain than modern humans, but the scientists at this point, do not believe he was brighter.

It was indicated on the occasion that including Lucy's species, Australopithecus Afarensis, Ethiopia has exclusively yielded key hominid species, which play major role in the study of human evolution. These include Ardipitheus ramidus ramidus, Ardipithecus ramidus Kadabba, Australupi thecus garhi, and the currently announced Homo Sapiens Edaltu (old man).

 

The fossils were found in the middle Awash study area of Africa's Ethiopia, in the Afar land area. There are at least 233 paleoanthropological sites in Ethiopia. Paleontologists in Africa have unearthed the skulls of three of the first Africans - two adults and a child who were undergoing the final transition from a pre-human form to the faces we see in the mirror today.

All three fossils were sandwiched between two volcanic layers that could be accurately dated to about 160,000 BC. The age of the bones and their remarkable state of preservation made the discovery unprecedented.

Discovery of the 160,000-year-old skulls - the oldest known fossils of modern humans - proves conclusively, expedition leaders say, that humans originated in Africa and did not evolve from Neanderthals, a separate species that vanished from Europe about 30,000 years ago.

 

The skulls retain only minor features of earlier, more ape-like ancestors, primarily a deeper face and longer braincase, says Tim White, co-director of the Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California-Berkeley. He prepared and pieced together fossil skull fragments with Berhane Asfaw of the Rift Valley Research Service in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

 

Sharp, flake type stone tools were found near the skulls, along with the remains of a butchered hippopotamus, says Yonas Beyene of the Ethiopian Authority for Research and Conservation of the Cultural Heritage. He says the tools represent a technological advance over the bulky hand ax tools that were used for more than 1 million years.

 

Unusual markings on the skulls indicate the first humans practiced a form of ancestor worship that involved handling skulls of the dead, White says.

 

The surfaces of the child's skull were worn smooth from handling. The opening at the base of the skulls may have been widened either to remove the brains for an ancestral meal or to make room for a pole on which to display the skull, or both. One of the adult skulls has parallel cut marks around the perimeter.

 

White says not a single human bone from the rest of the bodies was found anywhere near the site. This suggests the skulls were not part of a burial.

 

The Middle Awash region has become the most productive site in the world for the discovery of human and pre-human fossils. The new skulls add to a line of fossils dating back nearly 6 million years.

 

"The skulls link all modern people with a whole series of earlier fossils from Africa. Now we have a very good chain of evidence" on human origins, White says. The discovery is reported in today's Nature. The fossils were dated by Paul Renne, Berkeley Geochronology Center; Bill Hart, Miami University of Ohio; and Giday Wolde Gabriel of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

 

Evidence has mounted over the past 20 years that all modern humans originated in Africa. Scientists estimate that these Africans migrated from Africa 100,000 to 120,000 years ago. Paleontologist Chris Stringer from the Museum of Natural History in London, say modern humans clearly evolved in Africa.

 

"What this discovery in Ethiopia shows is that the shared features of modern humans, our high-rounded brain case, small brow ridges, originated in Africa," says Stringer.

 

Those first real humans, he says, most likely left Africa in a second wave that eventually replaced the remnants of the first, pre-human diaspora. According to Berkeley's Tim White, the evidence also lays to rest any notion that Neanderthals were direct human ancestors. Rather, he says, they were a branch of pre-human evolution that remained isolated in Europe.

 

Professor White said: "With these new crania we can now see what our direct ancestors looked like. We've lacked intermediate fossils between pre-humans and modern humans, between 100,000 and 300,000 years ago, and that's where these fossils fit. Now, the fossil record meshes with the molecular evidence. All the genetics have pointed to a geologically recent origin for humans in Africa, and now we have the fossils."

 

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