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<ul class="summary-list"><li>Researchers discovered the tooth of a Homo sapien child dating back to about 54,000 years in <keyword id="11964539" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="france" source="Orion">France</keyword>.</li><li>The discovery would be the earliest evidence of modern humans living in Europe after migrating from Africa.</li></ul>A child's tooth discovered in a cave in France could be the first evidence of modern humans reaching western Europe about 54,000 years ago, around 10,000 years earlier than previously thought.The finding suggests that <keyword id="12946694" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="homo-sapiens" source="Orion">Homo sapiens</keyword> could have once co-existed in the region alongside <keyword id="12417510" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="neanderthals" source="Orion">Neanderthals</keyword> before the latter's extinction. The fossilized molar belonging to a Homo sapiens child was found in a cave known as Grotte Mandrin in the Rhone Valley, according to research published by the academic journal <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj9496?adobe_mc=MCMID%3D43677824562408720122227329783801622477%7CMCORGID%3D242B6472541199F70A4C98A6%2540AdobeOrg%7CTS%3D1644580644">Science Advances.</a>Professor Ludovic Slimak of the University of Toulouse, who led the team who made the findings, told the BBC that the discovery "literally rewrites all our books of history.""We are now able to demonstrate that Homo sapiens arrived 12,000 years before we expected, and this population was then replaced after that by other Neanderthal populations," Slimak told the outlet.Neanderthals are an extinct species of human that lived across Europe and Western Asia starting 400,000 years ago.Although scientists are uncertain about the cause of their extinction, current theory suggests it took place about 40,000 years ago, soon after Homo sapiens arrived in Europe from Africa.The new findings indicate the cave in Rhone Valley was inhabited alternatingly by both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.The team was able to determine that at one point, the two species traded occupancy of the cave within just one year, according to the journal <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/did-neanderthals-and-modern-humans-take-turns-living-french-cave">Science</a>.Archeologists determined this by uncovering fossil evidence found in different sedimentary layers deposited on the cave floor over thousands of years.The researchers dated the site's layers using radiocarbon and luminescence techniques, and the lower the layer, the further back in time they were able to see. The layer containing the Homo sapiens child's tooth, dating back to around 54,000 years, was sandwiched between different layers containing teeth belonging to Neanderthals, according to <keyword id="11896083" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="science" source="Orion">Science</keyword> journal."We've often thought that the arrival of modern humans in Europe led to the pretty rapid demise of Neanderthals," Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, a co-author of the study, said in a press release."This new evidence suggests that both the appearance of modern humans in Europe and disappearance of Neanderthals is much more complex."The tooth was found along with stone tools known as Neronian tools associated with modern humans.Professor Ludovic Slimak told <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/09/europe/tooth-human-neanderthal-france-cave-scn/index.html">CNN</a> that he believed the two groups must have exchanged knowledge somehow, as the tools were made from flint sourced from hundreds of kilometers away, knowledge which likely came from the indigenous Neanderthals."What precisely was the interaction? We just don't know. We have no idea whether it was a good relationship or a bad relationship. Was it a group exchange, or did they have (Neanderthal) scouts to show and guide them?"While this research is potentially groundbreaking, some experts urged caution as the claims rely upon the discovery of a single tooth.Paleogeneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox of the University of Barcelona told Science magazine that to make a stronger case, solid skeletal or genetic evidence would be needed.

A child's tooth found in a cave could rewrite understanding of early human history, researchers say

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/discoveries-change-picture-of-human-history-evolution-2020-01">oldest human fossils</a> in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/locust-swarm-east-africa-kenya-eating-2020-8">East Africa</a> may be even more ancient than scientists thought.</li><li>New research indicates the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fossils-reveal-ecology-of-australia-prehistoric-rainforest-2022-1">fossils</a> were buried in a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/muons-help-map-magma-inside-volcanoes-predict-eruptions-2021-11">volcanic eruption</a> about 233,000 years ago.</li></ul>Eastern Africa's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/discoveries-change-picture-of-human-history-evolution-2020-01">oldest human fossils</a> are even more ancient than researchers thought, a new study suggests.The Omo I <keyword id="11954588" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="fossils" source="Orion">fossils</keyword> are a set of <keyword id="12946694" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="homo-sapiens" source="Orion">Homo sapiens</keyword> bones unearthed in the late 1960s, deep in <keyword id="12031338" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="ethiopia" source="Orion">Ethiopia</keyword>'s Omo Kibish formation. The site lies within the Ethiopian Rift, a valley where volcanic activity has preserved a wealth of human fossils and artifacts. For decades, scientists believed the Omo I bones were less than 200,000 years old.Now, an international team of scientists determined that the fossils were buried beneath the ash of a volcanic eruption about 233,000 years ago — meaning the bones are at least that old.<div type="image" title="green valleys in brown rock tiered cliff formations in ethiopia" height="1254" width="1672" msid="88879402" hostid="261"></div>Their research, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04275-8">published</a> in the journal Nature on Wednesday, is part of a larger effort to date major volcanic eruptions throughout the Ethiopian Rift's history. Dating those eruptions would allow researchers to more accurately date the fossils there, and help them piece together a timeline of human history — which seems to stretch further into the past than they realized.For decades, the Omo bones were the oldest known Homo sapiens fossils and evidence that modern humans first emerged in <keyword id="12946695" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="east-africa" source="Orion">East Africa</keyword> about 200,000 years ago. That theory was shaken by the discovery of <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.22114">315,000-year-old bones</a> in Morocco in 2017, which seem to belong to Homo sapiens — indicating that humans emerged much earlier than researchers thought, and probably in more than one part of Africa. (Still, some paleontologists argue that the Morocco fossils are not Homo sapiens.)<div type="image" title="Two views of a composite reconstruction of the earliest known Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, based on micro computed tomographic scans of multiple original fossils, are shown in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters June 7, 2017. Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig/Handout via REUTERS " height="384" width="800" msid="88879403" hostid="261"></div>The new Omo Kibish findings indicate that even in East Africa, humans have been walking the Earth far longer than scientists once thought."It's possible that new finds and new studies may extend the age of our species even further back in time," Christine Lane, a coauthor of the study who leads the Cambridge Tephra Laboratory, said in a <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/939551">press release</a>.<h2>Crushing pumice helped researchers date a key volcanic eruption</h2>To determine the age of other fossils from the Omo Kibish formation, scientists have radiometrically dated the layers of volcanic ash above and below the fossil. But they couldn't do that with the ash above Omo I, because it was too fine, according to Céline Vidal, a geographer at the University of Cambridge who led the study.By analyzing the chemicals in that ash, Vidal's team linked it to the nearby Shala volcano. While they couldn't date the ash itself, they were able to date the pumice stones scattered across the region by the eruption from the same volcano."Each eruption has its own fingerprint — its own evolutionary story below the surface, which is determined by the pathway the magma followed," Vidal said in the press release. "Once you've crushed the rock, you free the minerals within, and then you can date them, and identify the chemical signature of the volcanic glass that holds the minerals together."By crushing and dating the pumice that Vidal's team sent them, researchers at the University of Glasgow determined that the eruption happened around 233,000 years ago — give or take 22,000 years."We can only date humanity based on the fossils that we have, so it's impossible to say that this is the definitive age of our species," Vidal said. "The study of <keyword id="12417506" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="human-evolution" source="Orion">human evolution</keyword> is always in motion. Boundaries and timelines change as our understanding improves. But these fossils show just how resilient humans are: that we survived, thrived, and migrated in an area that was so prone to natural disasters."

Oldest human fossils from eastern Africa are about 30,000 years older than scientists thought

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AHomo_neanderthalensis_adult_male_-_head_model_-_Smithsonian_Museum_of_Natural_History_-_2012-05-17.jpg">By Tim Evanson</a></div></div></div>The key difference between human beings and Neanderthals is how we consume and expend energy. It goes a long way toward explaining why we survived to the modern era while our - <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-human-neanderthal-babies-were-rare-2016-6">literal</a> - kissing cousins died out.That's one of the interesting takeaways from <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/9/14/12887956/human-neanderthal-sex-love-genetics">a long article</a> by Vox's Brain Resnick exploring the inter-species sex lives of Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis.(Every living person not of exclusively African descent has some Neanderthal ancestry. It appears Neanderthals never made it to Africa.)Resnick spoke to Bernard Wood, a paleoanthropologist at George Washington University. Here's the bit of their conversation that stuck out to me:"They probably needed about another 600 or 700 calories a day more than a modern human" to feed their hardier bodies, [Wood] explains - great in times of plenty but catastrophic in a famine. They were the gas-guzzling pickup truck of the hominids. We were the smart car.That goes a ways toward explaining why our species of human out-competed Neanderthals, even as we mated with them.It's unclear how smart or social Neanderthals were, but we know <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140421-neanderthal-dna-genes-human-ancestry-science/">they never formed</a> the kinds of large, aggressive bands that Homo sapiens did. They were squatter than us, and bulkier, with wide bones and short foreheads. We also know their numbers dwindled, and then they disappeared around 40,000 years ago.Wood's suggestion, that Neanderthals were simply not energy-efficient enough to survive periods of scarcity, is compelling. (Still, as <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/9/14/12887956/human-neanderthal-sex-love-genetics">he points out later</a>, Neanderthals managed to survive for a million years, far longer than we have so far.)To be clear: Wood doesn't claim that this difference in caloric need is the complete explanation for Neanderthals' demise, but he does conjure an intriguing image - a species that simply requires more resources than the world could always offer. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-cure-bad-breath-dentist-tips-2016-9">The easiest way to get rid of bad breath - according to a dentist</a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="l0d3VtNTE6ZOUdBiKhAS1KGSPIdsEHGy" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

This is the most important difference between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Callao Cave Archaeology ProjectRight upper teeth of the Homo luzonensis individual CCH6. From left to right: two premolars and 3 molars.</div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>Anthropologists may have discovered <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/discovery-300000-year-old-skulls-human-origins-2017-6">a new human relative</a> in the Philippines.</li><li>Named Homo luzonensis after the island it was discovered on, this ancient hominin lived between 50,000 and 67,000 years ago.</li><li><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1067-9">A new study</a> discusses how H. luzonensis shares traits with both <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/difference-humans-neanderthals-homo-sapiens-2016-9">older human ancestors</a> like Australopithecus and Homo erectus, and also modern-day humans. </li><li>Not all anthropologists are convinced it is a new species, but the discovery indicates this time period in our evolutionary history <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hobbit-people-disappeared-after-human-arrival-2016-4">was far more complicated</a> that scientists thought.</li></ul>In a hidden cave in the heart of the Philippine jungle, archaeologists have discovered a new human relative.At the northern tip of the Philippines lies the tiny island of Luzon, and some 50,000 years ago, an ancient hominin species lived and thrived there, according to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1067-9">a study</a> published April 10 in the journal Nature.Hominins are any ancestors in the human lineage (including modern-day Homo sapiens) who are more closely related to each other than they are to chimpanzees. That includes everything from stone tool-wielding Homo erectus to our Neanderthal cousins.Read More: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/climate-change-made-neanderthals-cannibals-2019-4">Nibbled-on bones found in a cave revealed that our Neanderthal ancestors ate each other. Scientists may have figured out why.</a>Scientists already knew that hominins lived on Luzon, given the 2010 discovery of a single foot bone <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20569967">dated to 67,000 years ago</a> in the Callao Cave on the northern end of the island. But they didn't know whether that foot bone belonged to a member of Homo sapiens or an individual that was part of a new species.The new study describes the discovery of additional fossils - several other foot and hand bones, a partial thigh bone, and seven teeth - in Callao Cave, which helped anthropologists determine that a previously undiscovered ancient hominin once lived on Luzon tens of thousands of years ago.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Callao Cave Archaeology ProjectCallao Cave (Luzon Island, the Philippines), where scientists discovered the fossils of Homo luzonensis.</div></div></div>The finding will help scientists "improve our knowledge of human evolution, especially in Asia, where human evolution was clearly much more complex (and much more interesting) than what we thought before," lead author of the study, Florent Detroit, told Business Insider.Detroit and his colleagues named the species Homo luzonensis, after the name of the island. It's the first new hominin species discovery since <a href="https://elifesciences.org/articles/09560">Homo naledi was discovered in South Africa in 2015</a>.<h2>A mosaic of traits made this hominin species hard to categorize </h2>The researchers assigned the bones that they found to three H. luzonensis individuals - two adults and one child."Overall these teeth and bones have a striking combination of characteristics never before reported together in a hominin species," Matthew Tocheri, an anthropologist from Lakehead University in Ontario who was not involved in the study, wrote in <a href="https://press.nature.com/wp-content/uploads/files/2019/04/Tocheri-NV-Detroit.pdf">a follow-up article for Nature</a>.H. luzonensis' teeth, for example, have a hodge podge of traits that match the teeth of Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, and another smaller-brained human ancestor, Paranthropus, in different ways.The new species' teeth are "astonishingly small," Tocheri said, with not a lot of complexity on the crown surfaces (those tiny grooves and crevasses on the tops of teeth) - suggesting that H. luzonensis' teeth were more like those of modern humans.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Callao Cave Archaeology ProjectRight upper teeth of the Homo luzonensis individual CCH6. From right to left: two premolars and 3 molars.</div></div></div>On the other hand, H. luzonensis' hands and feet retained more "primitive" features, like those found in our older ancestors like Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus africanus - despite the fact that this new species and Australopiths are separated by 2 to 3 million years of time and evolution. The new species' hand and foot bones were curved, and according to Tocheri, its toe bones were "essentially indistinguishable" in shape from Australopith toes.In the study, the authors pointed to the fact that the unique combination of H. luzonensis' Homo-like teeth and Australopith-like hands and feet hasn't been seen in any other specimens in the fossil record, which "warrants their attribution to a new species."<h2>Is H. luzonensis actually a new species?</h2>Jeremy DeSilva, an anthropologist from Dartmouth College who was not involved in the study, still isn't convinced that the individuals classified as H. luzonensis represent a new hominin species."Whenever there's a new discovery like this, it's like Christmas morning for me," DeSilva told Business Insider. "But I'm not sure that I'm willing to accept that this is a new species quite yet."He added that he doesn't think the researchers have enough fossil material to make this claim. "I'd like to see more; I'm sure they would too," he said. "Maybe a skull, a knee, an ankle, or a heel - more than three footbones, when each individual has 52."Another anthropologist who was not involved in the discovery, William Harcourt-Smith from Lehman College, agrees with DeSilva, and told Business Insider that he was "cautious" about the designation. "Assigning this to a new species is right at the margin for what's acceptable," Harcourt-Smith said. He echoed DeSilva's desire for additional material before making a definitive case for a new species, saying that the current evidence is "too meager" to make a definitive case one way or another.<h2>There just isn't enough evidence yet, according to some anthropologists</h2>Two of the most recent hominin species discoveries were based on far more fossil material than Homo luzonensis' unveiling was. When scientists <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02999">discovered </a><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02999">Homo floresiensis</a>, nicknamed "the Hobbit" for its short stature, on the Indonesian island of Flores, they described a near-complete female skeleton, including a skull. Since the discovery in 2003, bones and teeth from some 12 H. floresiensis individuals have been recovered at the Liang Bua cave .<h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/14405058@N08/2956430528/">Flickr/Ryan Somma</a>A cast of a Homo floresiensis skull.</div></div></div></h2>The discovery of Homo naledi included at least 15 individuals, which allowed the anthropologists to study and assess several specimens of the same bone. But when it comes to Homo luzonensis, scientists have found just 13 bones total, and for DeSilva and Harcourt-Smith, that just isn't enough data to make the call on whether what Detroit and his colleagues found in the Phillippines is a new species."I'm going to consider myself a fence sitter on this one," DeSilva said about whether or not he agreed with the designation.<h2>H. luzonensis probably lived undisturbed on the island for thousands of years</h2>H. luzonensis' mosaic of traits makes it difficult to determine where it sits on the human family tree related to its other hominin brethren."Almost every aspect of the new fossils was (and are still) surprising," Detroit said. Almost all of them show unexpected features for a "recent" hominin that lived at the same time as Homo sapiens, he added. All the anthropologists agreed that H. luzonensis' feet were of particular interest. "The anatomy is eye brow-raising," DeSilva said. He said the new species' foot bones don't fit into the range of what scientists might find in modern humans - or other hominin species.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Callao Cave Archaeology ProjectProximal foot phalanx of Homo luzonensis CCH4 in side view. The bone is about 2 centimeters long.</div></div></div>Typically, curved hands and feet like H. luzonensis' suggest that the species climbed trees at least some of the time. Australopiths with similar features likely walked on two feet while still being able to climb trees.But the problem with this new species is that it lived at least 2 million years or so after Australopiths, during an era when anthropologists generally accept that all human ancestors only walked on two feet and did little else."We are certainly not pretending that H. luzonensis was "back to the trees," Detroit said. Instead, the study authors think the primitive, curved foot bones might have something to do with H. luzonensis' island habitat.In order to get to Luzon from mainland Asia, H. luzonensis would have had to partake in a sea crossing. The surrounding water made accessing Luzon a challenge, limiting species migration onto and off the island.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Callao Cave Archaeology Project, courtesy of Marion DevyThe cave where anthropologists discovered Homo luzonensis.</div></div></div>Isolated habitats like islands are ripe for the appearance of unique sets of traits, which the study authors think could explain the species' distinct anatomy, including its "primitive" hands and feet.<h2>What this species tells us about our human relatives' evolutionary history</h2>According to Detroit, 15 years ago, scientists' conception of human evolution in Asia was very simple. Homo erectus migrated out of Africa to settle in east and southeast Asia around 1.8 million years ago, with "nothing happening until the arrival of H. sapiens" in the area until around 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, when modern humans eventually took the place of H. erectus.That version of our evolutionary history no longer holds water.Detroit's team dated H. luzonensis' age to somewhere between 50,000 and 67,000 years old. That means this hominin was alive at the same time as at least four other human relatives: Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo floresiensis, and modern humans. "We continue to realize that few thousands of years back in time, H. sapiens was definitely not alone on Earth," Detroit said. "The scenario was clearly much more complex than just H. sapiens replacing H. erectus."<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Callao Cave Archaeology Project, courtesy of Marion DevyView of excavations in Callao Cave.</div></div></div>There's no question that these fossil are something different, Harcourt-Smith said. "It's not modern human, doesn't seem to be a hobbit either, but we need more data. This is just a tantalizing glimpse of how diverse hominins really were." <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/babies-honey-infant-botulism-bacteria-health-danger-2019-3">Babies can't eat honey because it can cause 'infant botulism' - here's what that means</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

Scientists may have discovered a new human relative. It lived on a tiny island in the Philippines at the same time as Homo Sapiens.

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div><ul><li>A team of human pro gamers have beaten a team of AI bots&#xa0;created by an AI company cofounded by Elon Musk.</li><li>The team of bots have previously consistently defeated non-professional players at the game.</li><li>The bots still have the chance to steal victory in the next two matches.</li></ul>When AI research company's OpenAI's team of bots <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-hails-huge-milestone-for-ai-as-bots-beat-humans-at-dota-2-2018-6">first defeated a teams of puny humans at the video game Dota 2 in June</a>, Bill Gates hailed it as a "milestone." However, when pitched against professional players, the bots were defeated - at least in an initial match.We first saw the news via <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/23/17772376/openai-dota-2-pain-game-human-victory-ai">The Verge</a>.&#xa0;OpenAI, which was cofounded by <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-shares-thoughts-elon-musks-ai-2018-5">the famously AI-fearful Elon Musk</a>, created the&#xa0;five neural networks called OpenAI Five with the intention of building an AI which could learn to cooperate with each other and defeat human players. The AI trains itself by <a href="https://blog.openai.com/openai-five/">playing 180 years' worth of games against itself every day</a>.&#xa0;On Wednesday the bots put this training to the test, playing against a professional South American team called paiN Gaming at the esports event The International in Vancouver. The match lasted 51 minutes and was by all accounts tense.AI researcher Mike Cook commented on Twitter that while the bots seemed good at moment-to-moment decision-making, they had trouble with larger strategic decisions.The Verge reports that one key mistake made by the bots was fixating on a non-player neutral character named Roshan, who can be killed for big rewards. The bots focussing their efforts on him left their home territory vulnerable to attack from the human players.Mike Cook also observed that the bots differed from human players in that they were more willing to sacrifice their team-mates where beneficial.OpenAI's cofounder and CTO Greg Brockman praised both team's performances in a tweet.There are still two matches to go and the bots could still snatch the victory. Business Insider has contacted OpenAI to ask how they feel their bots will fare in their next two games.<div></div><div></div><div></div> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-anesthesia-works-affects-brain-body-2018-8">How anesthesia affects your brain and body</a></h3> <div> </div> </div></hr>

There's hope for homo sapiens yet after humans beat a team of AI bots at the video game 'Dota 2'

Finally, Europe has found a place on the map that pinpoints the areas where <keyword id="163713" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Early-humans">early humans</keyword> existed much before the current human species or <keyword id="602546" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Homo-sapiens">Homo sapiens</keyword> came into being. According to a recent report published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, British scientists, on a routine geological survey, have discovered the <keyword id="214190" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="Footprints">footprints</keyword> of ancient humans called <keyword id="2064704" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Hominins">hominins</keyword> on the <keyword id="2064715" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Muddy-bank">muddy bank</keyword> of an <keyword id="2064717" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Estuary">estuary</keyword> at <keyword id="2064705" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Happisburgh">Happisburgh</keyword> in <keyword id="86049" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Norfolk">Norfolk</keyword>. These <keyword id="2064706" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Footmarks">footmarks</keyword> are about 800,000 years old and look like they belonged to a group of adults and children – probably that of a family. 
 However, these are not the oldest footmarks left by our ancient ancestors. You will find such footprints at <keyword id="2064707" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Laetoli">Laetoli</keyword> in <keyword id="89578" type="COUNTRY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Tanzania">Tanzania</keyword> dating back to 3.5 million years while those found at <keyword id="2064708" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Ileret">Ileret</keyword> and <keyword id="1179917" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Koobi-Fora">Koobi Fora</keyword> in <keyword id="6360004" type="COUNTRY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Kenya">Kenya</keyword> are about 1.5 million years old. But the hominin footprints found in the UK are the oldest outside <keyword id="12925" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="Africa">Africa</keyword>, clearly indicating that our ancestors evolved in <keyword id="686724" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="Continental-Europe">continental Europe</keyword> as well. After all, <keyword id="6355981" type="COUNTRY" weightage="100" keywordseo="England">England</keyword> was not much like an island in those days and was connected to the continental Europe. 
 Scientists analysed the shallow prints using multi-image <keyword id="2064709" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Photogrammetry">photogrammetry</keyword>, a technique that combines digital photographs to create a permanent record. The final output shows that the hollows are distinctly elongated and tally with the foot sizes of hominins from different age-groups. In many cases, one can distinctly identify the heel, the arch and even the toes. 
 
In case you are curious, let us tell you these foot sizes match the modern shoe sizes of 7 or 8 in UK/India. The US equivalent will be size 8 or 9 while the European equivalent will be 41 or 42. The biggest footprints could be that of a male while the smaller ones, varying in size, could be left by women and children. 
 
As for height, the hominins seem to resemble the Homo sapiens and their heights varied between 2'11" and 5'6" (depending on age). Another interesting point is that each walked on their two feet, which means these ancient people were fully bipedal. 
 “This is an extraordinarily rare discovery,” said <keyword id="1295177" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Nick-Ashton">Nick Ashton</keyword> of the <keyword id="173563" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="British-Museum">British Museum</keyword>, who led the research team, which also involved the National History Museum and Queen Mary University London. “At first we weren’t sure what we were seeing,” Dr Ashton told the media. “But as we removed any remaining beach sand and sponged off the seawater, it was clear that the hollows resembled prints and that we needed to record the surface as quickly as possible before the sea eroded it away,” he said. 
 But what is the real identity of the <keyword id="2064711" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Happisburgh-hominins">Happisburgh hominins</keyword> whose footmarks indicated that they were travelling south, treading the mud-flats along the river edge? Going by several points of similarity regarding body stature and the period in history when they existed, some experts believe that they might have belonged to the species called <keyword id="2064713" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Homo-antecessor">Homo antecessor</keyword> or <keyword id="2064703" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Pioneer-Man">Pioneer Man</keyword>, whose fossil remains have been found at <keyword id="1329916" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Atapuerca">Atapuerca</keyword> in <keyword id="6363645" type="COUNTRY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Spain">Spain</keyword>. 
 Homo antecessor might have become extinct from Europe some 600,000 years ago and next came <keyword id="1453378" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Homo-heidelbergensis">Homo heidelbergensis</keyword>, followed by the <keyword id="528865" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Neanderthals">Neanderthals</keyword> and finally, the modern humans or Homo sapiens, who came into existence some 40,000 years ago. 
 
Image: Wikipedia

Footprints
In The Mud Of Time Indicate Early Humans Treaded European Shores

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image">Photo courtesy of Georgian National MuseumA 1.8-million-year-old skull combines a small braincase with a long face and large teeth, which is unlike any other Homo fossils on record.</div></div>Researchers have traditionally used differences among fossilized remains of ancient humans to define separate species among the earliest members of our Homo genus - Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Homo rudolfensis, for example. 
But an amazing new skull found in Africa suggests that the specimens previously representing different species could come from a single, evolving lineage, according to a <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1238484" target="_blank">new report</a> published in <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">Science</keyword> on Thursday, Oct. 17.
So-called "Skull 5" was dug up in Dmanisi, Georgia, between 2000 and 2005. It's believed to date back roughly 1.8 million years and comes from the same time period and location as four other skulls found earlier at Dmanisi. 
Skull 5 is unique not only because it is the most complete Homo skull ever found, but it also looks very different from the other skulls found at this site. It combines a small braincase - about one-third the size of modern humans - with a large face that has a massive jaw and big teeth.
"This is a strange combination of features that we didn't know before in the early Homo," Marcia S. Ponce de León, from the Anthropological Institute and Museum in Switzerland, said in a media conference on Oct. 16.
Researchers have found fragments of other skulls from this time period - from other places in Africa and also Dmanisi - but they are not complete and belong to adolescents. Skull 5 provides the first evidence of how the face and jawbone of the full-grown early Homo was "oriented and positioned relative to the braincase," according to the study.
Even though the Dmanisi fossils have different physical traits, researchers believe that all five skulls come from the same ancient population - a species that they say is most consistent with Homo erectus because of particular traits, like the shape of the braincase.
The strong variation within a single species means that other Homo fossils from Africa could belong to the same, single lineage, but just have very diverse appearances. 
"[The Dmanisi finds] look quite different from one another, so it's tempting to publish them as different species," Christoph Zollikofer from the Anthropological Institute and Museum said in a statement."Yet we know that these individuals came from the same location and the same geological time, so they could, in principle, represent a single population of a single species."
Researchers point out that the variations in brain size among the Dmanisi skulls are analogous to what we would see among five randomly chosen humans or chimpanzees today. "It's about the difference between a brain of 1.2 liters and 1.6 or 7 liters," Zollikofer told reporters. 
<div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image">Image courtesy of M. Ponce de León and Ch. Zollikofer, University of Zurich, SwitzerlandThe complete skull "skull 5" (far right), was found alongside the remains of four other human ancestors.</div></div>
Archaeologists are still not sure if African fossils that pre-date the Dmanisi specimens - anything that is older than 1.8 to 1.9 millions years and currently classified as Homo habilis or Homo rudolfensis - can be lumped into one species because the <keyword id="48641" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="fossil">fossil</keyword> remains are too scattered and not in good condition. 
"Who knows who is Homo habilis?" said Zollikofer "The whole story is so shaky that we cannot just say that's Homo habilis because it's a hen and egg problem." Instead of looking at ancient specimens and assigning them different species names, he says we should look at the variation and "try to find out whether that ought to fit within normal patterns of variation of a given species."
It's also not clear what happened to Homo erectus after the date associated with the Dmanisi finds, although the study suggests that members from that population subsequently expanded from Africa and established populations in western Asia. 
"We now have one global human species," Zollikofer said. "What we can infer is that 1.8 million years ago there was another single global species." He added: "We don't know how Homo erectus connects to ourselves. That is the big question."

An Incredible New Skull Is Forcing Us To Rethink The Evolution Of Early Humans

Raphael Gaillarde/Gamma-Rapho via GettyAn artist's reconstruction of Homo erectus in the Tautavel prehistory museum in France, July 18, 2013.<ul class="summary-list"><li>Homo erectus fossils discovered on the island of Java come from a population that died between 117,000 and 108,000 years ago, researchers have found.</li><li>It's the last known appearance of Homo erectus in the archaeological record.</li><li>The individuals seem to have perished in a mysterious mass death, after which their bones were swept downstream in a flood.</li><li>The date of these fossils means that Homo erectus lived at the same time as three other human ancestors.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul>In the early 1930s, Dutch anthropologists found a giant bed of bones hidden above the banks of the Solo river on the Indonesian island of Java. More than 25,000 fossil specimens were buried in the river mud in an area called Ngandong, including 12 skull caps and two leg bones from a particularly intriguing human ancestor: Homo erectus.This species of early human persisted for nearly 2 million years and spread far across parts of Africa and Asia. But scientists had been unable to identify when the last of them died out. Efforts to determine the exact age of the Java fossils didn't help much, since that gave a broad range of options: Their time of death was estimated to be somewhere between 550,000 and 27,000 years ago. But <a href="https://nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1863-2">a study</a> published today in the journal Nature has put questions about the fate of the last Homo erectus to rest. By dating the surrounding river sediment, rather than the fossils themselves, anthropologists were able to identify a much tighter age range for these skulls. The results showed that the Homo erectus individuals perished in a mass death between 117,000 and 108,000 years ago.That means the bones represent the last known appearance of Homo erectus in the archaeological record.Courtesy of Kira WestawayA side view of one of the Homo erectus skull caps discovered in Ngandong, Indonesia.The new timeline helps solve other puzzles as well, since it enables anthropologists to identify other ancient human species that Homo erectus overlapped with - and those it didn't."Our research shows that Homo erectus did not survive late enough to interact with modern humans on Java," Russell Ciochon, a co-author of the new study, told Business Insider. "Ngandong is the youngest known Homo erectus site in the world."<h2>A flood collected the fossilized bones</h2>According to the study authors, the skulls caps and leg bones discovered in Ngandong represent the largest Homo erectus find at any single site.Russell L. Ciochon/University of IowaAn exposed bone bed as it looked in 2010, during excavations in Ngandong, Indonesia.That's because the bones, along with 25,000 other fossils that were later lost during World War II, "accumulated within a log jam in the river," according to study co-author Kira Westaway.She added that the skull caps are missing parts of the cranium because the skeletons got damaged when they were washed down the river in a flood. Alongside the fossils, researchers found bones from at least 64 mammals that also got carried downstream."The fossils would not have been concentrated in this small area without the flooding event," Ciochon added.The fact that the bones were all swept downstream at the same time suggests the 12 Homo erectus individuals they came from died simultaneously in what could be a mass death.<h2>Climate change may have killed Homo erectus</h2>Ciochon said his team isn't sure how these particular individuals died, but one theory about why Homo erectus died out on Java overall may sound familiar: climate change.Between about 120,000 and 110,000 years ago, the world shifted from a glacial period to an interglacial period, and temperatures rose. Java, which is now mostly rainforest, used to be covered in woodlands. But around the time of Homo erectus' extinction, the island's environment started to get wetter and more humid due to increasing temperatures, which allowed the rainforest to grow. Russell L. Ciochon/University of IowaExcavations in Ngandong, Indonesia in 2010.It's possible our human ancestors there couldn't handle the shift."The demise of Homo erectus on Java coincides with this rainforest expansion, and the changing environment likely contributed to the demise," Ciochon said. "No Homo erectus fossils are found after the environment changed, so Homo erectus likely was unable to adapt to this new rainforest environment."Westaway said the encroaching rainforest "would have caused problems for the essentially open woodland fauna" that Homo erectus liked to hunt, which may have led to food insecurity."They might not have been able to find food sources they normally ate, or they might have been more vulnerable to the predators in the rainforest," Ciochon added.The Ngandong site also included bones from animals that were more suited to woodland environments, like elephant, deer, and cattle. Those creatures lived and died at the same time as Homo erectus.<h2>Intermingling human ancestors</h2>By correctly dating these fossils, anthropologists can now explore who Homo erectus might have interacted with before they died out. The list is large: Homo erectus could have interbred with Denisovans - another group of human ancestors found mostly in Siberia and east Asia - as well as two other early human species that lived on Pacific islands, called Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis.DEA / A. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini via GettyA skull of Homo erectus found in Indonesia, also known as the Sangiran skull, in 1995.Denisovans lived between 200,000 and 50,000 years ago. Genetic evidence indicates that they interbred with both modern humans and an older species, passing on about 1% of their DNA. "This older species is likely H. erectus," Ciochon said, given that the new date from his new study falls solidly within the time frame that Denisovans were alive.But it's not clear whether Denisovans and Homo erectus intermixed on Java in particular."There is considerable speculation about where and when the Denisovans meet Homo erectus and what the results of those interactions were," Ciochon added.Russell L. Ciochon/University of IowaExcavations underway in Ngandong, Indonesia, in 2010.This new discovery also opens up the possibility that the two other east Asian ancestor species descended from Homo erectus.More than 50,000 years ago, Homo luzonensis lived and thrived on what's now the Philippine island of Luzon. On the nearby Indonesian island of Flores, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02999">Homo floresiensis</a>, nicknamed "the Hobbit" for its short stature, lived between 100,000 and 60,000 year ago. "There is no doubt" that these three species overlapped temporally, Westaway said.Kira Westaway/Macquarie UniversityThe Solo river near Ngandong, Indonesia, with exposed river terraces on its bank.Ciochon and Westaway's new research cements Homo erectus' status as one of the longest-lived early humans. The species <a href="http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-erectus">lasted about 1.8 million years</a> - roughly six times as long as Homo sapiens (us) have existed. The first Homo erectus specimen was discovered in Indonesia in 1891, and fossils have been found across Africa and in China. These ancestors made it to Java and nearby Pacific islands by crossing land bridges when sea levels were low, Ciochon said.He added that it's possible other Homo erectus populations outlived the counterparts found at the Java site."Our work provides the age of the last know appearance of Homo erectus, but this does not mean that it is the age of extinction," he said. "Small groups of Homo erectus may have lived longer without leaving fossil evidence." <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/homo-floresiensis-discovered-indonesia-archaeology-hobbit-ancestor-2016-12">Archaeologists made a groundbreaking discovery that unveils the mysterious origins of real-life hobbits</a></h3>

A group of our Homo erectus ancestors suffered a mysterious mass death more than 107,000 years ago. It's their last appearance in the fossil record.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Human bones in a German cave place Homo Sapiens in Europe 7,500 years earlier than experts thought.</li><li>The findings suggest Homo sapiens lived near Neanderthals for millennia, which is a new revelation.</li></ul>Researchers on the hunt to settle a long-standing debate ended up rewriting the timeline of ancient human history in the process.For years, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/creepiest-archaeological-finds-discoveries-this-year-2023">archaeologists have argued</a> over an ancient culture with the unwieldy title: the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician technocomplex. Even scientists know that’s a mouthful, so they call it the LRJ for short.The LRJ is characterized by the creation of specific blades and leaf points, which share aspects of both <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/neanderthals-humans-belong-to-same-species-could-rewrite-history-evolution-2023-12">Neanderthal and Homo sapien</a> craftsmanship.<div type="image" title="Ancient stone flints against a black background" height="2481" width="2363" msid="107638696" hostid="261" sizebytes="111870"></div>The debate is over who made them, and the answer could help offer clues as to what happened about 45,000 years ago — when Neanderthals, one of our closest human relatives, mysteriously went extinct across Europe while Homo sapiens, ultimately, thrived.“The usual wisdom was to consider that they were made most likely by late Neanderthals,” said study co-author Jean-Jacques Hublin, a professor of paleoanthropology at the College of France. But Hublin and his colleagues wanted to settle the debate once and for all.This led them to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/40000-year-bone-hints-humans-neanderthals-shared-cave-culture-2023-8">Ilsenhöhle cave</a> in Ranis, Germany, one of several sites across Northwestern Europe where LRJ artifacts have been found.<div type="image" title="The opening of Ilsenhöhle cave in Ranis, Germany" height="2848" width="4288" msid="107638697" hostid="261" sizebytes="1477158"></div>Besides solving the mystery they sought, the researchers wound up discovering so much more. <h2>Mining ancient DNA</h2>When they excavated the cave, the researchers uncovered more than just LRJ artifacts — they came upon tiny bone fragments, too. Most of the bones were too small to identify what animal they came from based on looks, alone. But thanks to a revelatory new analysis called zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry, or ZooMS, the researchers were able to determine that 13 of the roughly 2,000 bone fragments they analyzed belonged to early humans. <div type="image" title="A scientist loads a specimen into a isotope ratio mass spectrometer." height="1999" width="2999" msid="107638699" hostid="261" sizebytes="271266"></div>The next step was determining which species of ancient human they were from. If the team could figure that out, then it would likely point them to who made the LRJ artifacts in the cave, thus solving the mystery, Hublin said.To that end, they <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/museum-traces-skull-pillaged-german-colonizers-back-descendant-africa-tanzania-2023-9">extracted DNA</a>, which confirmed the bones belong to Homo sapiens, providing strong evidence that they were responsible for the LRJ artifacts. “Voila!” Hublin said triumphantly.But they weren’t done, yet. <div type="image" title="A scientist uses a pipetted from behind a glass shield." height="1643" width="3834" msid="107638702" hostid="261" sizebytes="101272"></div>The team also used <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/white-sands-human-footprints-ancient-dated-new-evidence-2023-10">radiocarbon dating</a> to date the bones, and were surprised by what they discovered. According to their data, Homo sapiens were present in Ranis 47,500 years ago — thousands of years earlier than previously thought.<h2>Unlikely neighbors</h2>Until this discovery, archaeologists believed Homo sapiens did not arrive in Western Europe until 42,000 years ago, contributing to the extinction of Neanderthals. <div type="image" title="Archaeological dig shaft" height="3024" width="4032" msid="107638704" hostid="261" sizebytes="1051412"></div>A growing library of evidence has been pushing this timeline back more and more. Hublin and the team's discoveries are the latest series of studies adding to the mounting pile.The research was published in three papers in the peer-reviewed journals <a target="_blank" href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=ceaa0e7743ba048950e781ae0e3844e825af8f782cdc13dfa6dbbc0655d789db&amp;postID=65c66cac236d0f5affdf1a73&amp;postSlug=homo-sapien-neanderthal-bones-german-cave-early-human-history-timeline-2024-2&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41586-023-06923-7%3Futm_medium%3Daffiliate%26utm_source%3Dcommission_junction%26utm_campaign%3DCONR_PF018_ECOM_GL_PHSS_ALWYS_DEEPLINK%26utm_content%3Dtextlink%26utm_term%3DPID100052172%26CJEVENT%3D08b9c570c11a11ee818e00a50a82b832">Nature</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=6a079e96b2f06555cf8b563113f79ea5c48cbb37cabb314245b0d32aea5dedb8&amp;postID=65c66cac236d0f5affdf1a73&amp;postSlug=homo-sapien-neanderthal-bones-german-cave-early-human-history-timeline-2024-2&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41559-023-02318-z%3Futm_medium%3Daffiliate%26utm_source%3Dcommission_junction%26utm_campaign%3DCONR_PF018_ECOM_GL_PHSS_ALWYS_DEEPLINK%26utm_content%3Dtextlink%26utm_term%3DPID100052172%26CJEVENT%3Dcffd3067c11c11ee80fd00970a82b821">Nature Ecology and Evolution</a> and paints a very different picture of history.It suggests there were small “pioneer” groups of Homo sapiens living in Europe with Neanderthals for thousands of years before the species went extinct.Whether these two groups ever interacted during that time remains unclear. “It’s not at all the picture we had years ago of this wave of Homo sapiens moving into Europe and replacing the Neanderthals,” said Hublin. “What we see now is that it was not a wave, it was several wavelets,”Moreover, the research suggests these early Homo sapien “pioneers” were more hardcore than we’ve given them credit for.<h2>Hardcore humans</h2>Previous research asserted that Homo sapiens were only able to enter Europe during warmer time periods because they were adapted to the warm climate of Africa, where they originated from. But the specimens and artifacts found at Ranis suggest they actually entered directly through the chilly Northwest, and that this region was much colder than previously thought.<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tooth-enamel-suggests-great-white-sharks-megalodons-competed-for-food-2022-5">Analysis of animal teeth</a> collected at the site revealed the climate was 7 to 15 degrees Celsius colder than it is today, similar to that of northern Scandinavia or parts of Siberia, said Hublin.Additionally, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/25-mesolithic-pits-found-in-bedfordshire-england-stun-archaeologists-2023-7">analysis of animal remains</a> revealed that mammals adapted to extreme cold were present at Ranis, including wooly mammoths, reindeer, and wolverines.<div type="image" title="On the left: animals bones against a black background. On the right: zooarchaeologist Geoff Smith examines one of these bones with a magnifying glass." height="2250" width="4000" msid="107638706" hostid="261" sizebytes="372572"></div>Questions remain about how warm-weather-adapted Homo sapiens survived such a dramatic transition. But they likely made warm clothing out of furs from these animals, explains study co-author Geoff Smith, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Kent. <h2>Rewriting prehistory</h2>Together, these findings paint a picture of human prehistory that is very different from the one we had before. But there are still questions to be answered.The researchers have no plans to excavate Ranis further, and the cave has been closed off for safety reasons. But they will continue to study the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/prehistoric-native-american-artifacts-found-in-mississippi-alligator-stomach-2021-9">specimens and artifacts</a> from this last dig to dive deeper into interactions between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals during this time.“I think we have more to discover,” Hublin said. “What’s ahead of us is understanding what was going on among the late Neanderthals. To what extent have they been penetrated by these newcomers? What <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ancient-humans-interbreed-with-mysterious-population-2020-2">kind of interactions</a> do they have with them? But I think it’s a great step to have resolved the LRJ story.”

Human bones unearthed from a German cave have altered the timeline of ancient human history

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Up until recently, the consensus was that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were separate species.</li><li>But most humans carry around <a target="_blank" href="https://www.genome.gov/27539119/2010-release-complete-neanderthal-genome-sequenced#:~:text=Bethesda%2C%20Md.%2C%20Thurs.,in%20Neanderthals%20or%20in%20Neanderthals'">2% of Neanderthal DNA</a>, challenging the view that we are different. </li></ul><a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/early-riser-may-be-able-thank-your-neanderthal-dna-study-2023-12">Neanderthals</a> have long been portrayed as dim-witted, brutish monsters who were genetically inferior to our direct ancestors, early modern humans.These ape-like creatures spoke in grunts, were beset with illnesses, and died out 40,000 years ago after losing the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ancient-humans-interbreed-with-mysterious-population-2020-2">evolutionary battle against Homo sapiens.</a>Or at least, that's what we've been told. Recent discoveries, however, are upending that view and reigniting a debate among scientists about whether Neanderthals should be considered to be the same species as early modern humans.If Neanderthals belonged to our species, it could reshape the history of human evolution and challenge how we define what makes us human.<h2>Most of us have some Neanderthal DNA</h2>The first fossils of Neanderthals were identified almost 200 years ago. By now, you would think scientists would have made up their minds about whether they should be defined as a separate species from Homo sapiens.But it turns out this is a matter of fierce debate, Antoine Balzeau, a paleontologist from the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in France, told Business Insider."When we were at first discussing the fossils in the 19th century, there was no real debate about specific species or not, simply because at the time, humans were seen as a species but by default," he said.<div type="image" title="A skull of a Neanderthal is seen in the foreground, the cast is partial, and missing bits of the skull are filled in. The skull is displayed in a museum, a person is seen in the background looking at the skulls." height="1217" width="2000" msid="106449427" hostid="261"></div>As more fossils emerged, scientists started questioning the strict separation between the species.Still, up to recently, the consensus was mostly that Neanderthals should be seen as separate. The hominins, who roamed Europe as early as 430,000 years ago, only briefly interacted with Homo sapiens emerging from Africa, who reached Europe about 50,000 years ago.The lineages separated about 500,000 years ago — relatively recently in the story of human evolution, but long enough ago that they looked significantly different. For many, that evidence was enough to close the debate: Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were separate species.That view started to change in 2008 when Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo achieved something that was thought to be impossible: he sequenced <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/some-more-neanderthal-dna-others-scientists-why-2023-10">the genome of a Neanderthal by extracting DNA from ancient bones.</a>Through his research, Pääbo was able to show that there's a little Neanderthal in most of us. In fact, he showed most living humans carry around <a target="_blank" href="https://www.genome.gov/27539119/2010-release-complete-neanderthal-genome-sequenced#:~:text=Bethesda%2C%20Md.%2C%20Thurs.,in%20Neanderthals%20or%20in%20Neanderthals'">2% of Neanderthal DNA</a>.The evidence also suggests that human ancestors and Neanderthals likely had children together when they cohabitated about 50,000 years ago.This news created a dogmatic rift, opening up the possibility, once again, that Neanderthals and humans should be considered to be the same species.After all, according to the strict biological definition of species, animals from different species shouldn't be able to produce fertile offspring."It definitely was a big game changer at that point," Laura Buck, an evolutionary anthropologist studying hybridization between hominin species, told BI."I think it has sort of brought that discussion to the forefront again," she said.<h2>Were Neanderthals more than just our distant cousins?</h2>The idea that species can't reproduce is "intuitively attractive because it's sort of clear cut," Buck said, "but biology isn't clear cut."She points to several examples of mammals that have been known to interbreed and have fertile offspring, like wolves and dogs, despite being clearly defined as separate species.For her, a better definition of Neanderthals, the most scientifically tried and tested, is the first one: the characteristics of their bones separate them from modern humans and their direct ancestors.<div type="image" title="Neanderthal" height="2592" width="2658" msid="106449429" hostid="261"></div>"I know there are various different papers saying if you shaved a Neanderthal, put him in a suit, and put him on the tube or the subway in New York, no one would notice, I don't think that's true," she said."I think we'd definitely think they looked a bit weird," she said.Balzeau agrees. "There may be some discussion between specialists about how we define the different groups but from a paleontological point of view, Homo neanderthalensis and almost Homo sapiens are very clear anatomical differences," said Balzeau.For others, however, the genomic information should be another argument to liberate the Neanderthal from its knuckle-dragging stereotype.That's the case for Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist who specializes in the Paleolythic at Durham University in the UK."It would be guesswork to use that evolutionary divergence to assume that there are different species," he told BI.<h2>Can culture define a species?</h2>Over the past two decades, digs started emerging showing Neanderthals may have been much more sophisticated than had been previously thought.Pettitt counts himself among those who, until recently, were skeptical that Neanderthals could have any sense of sophistication."Until say 20 years ago, Neanderthal behavior was looked on as fairly stupid, or at least fairly limited, and Homo sapiens were, by contrast, seen as quoting Shakespeare, as they dance across Europe," he joked."Which is, of course, nonsense, but it's a very entrenched view," he said.<div type="image" title="Neanderthal jewelry" height="507" width="768" msid="106449430" hostid="261"></div>After all, relative to their size, some studies suggest Neanderthals had a brain at least the same size, if not bigger, than our ancestors, indicating that they may have been very cerebral, Pettitt said"You don't buy a top-of-the-range computer simply to use it as an alarm clock. There's got to be an evolutionary reason why Neanderthals had selected for this remarkably, metabolically expensive tissue," he said.Studies have suggested that Neanderthals <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/neanderthals-hunted-cave-lions-feasted-meat-study-2023-10">were skilled hunters</a>, and hide workers, created rudimentary jewelry, had a complex lythic industry, and even worked with pigment.Some scientists even believe they may have had some form of spiritualism, and would bury their dead, revere lions, and may have even created cave paintings — though that evidence is still a matter of debate.For Pettitt, this suggests that as Neanderthals and humans lived alongside each other in Europe, there's a good chance they shared a culture or learned from observing each other.If they spoke, he said, "we can assume they probably spoke different languages. But that similarity suggests there was in fact a shared meaning, however simple."<h2>Could Neanderthals be called human?</h2>There's a bigger picture question at stake here: should Neanderthals be considered humans?"What humanity is very much depends on which group of people you're talking to," Buck said."It's something that is culturally defined, but it's also something that has sort of value judgments. We talk about inhumanity. We talked about humanity. It's not something that just refers to different types of organisms," she said.With the sheer number of people who are alive today, there is arguably more Neanderthal DNA on Earth than there ever was before.Angela Saini, author of "Superior: the Return of Race Science," argues that there is a real risk of getting this wrong. Those who are thought to have more Neanderthal DNA today could be wrongly thought of as inferior.Early studies have linked these Neanderthal genes to modern health effects like autoimmune diseases, diabetes, and some cancer— though how these genes exactly affect the health of the person who carries them is still mostly unclear. Neanderthal genes have also notably been associated with catching COVID-19.Because East Asian populations have been found to carry slightly more Neanderthal DNA on average, there is a real danger that this information will be used for discrimination.The flip side is that our interpretation of Neanderthal culture has changed dramatically in recent years. Saini notes that the Neanderthal image was rehabilitated just as people started to draw them closer to populations in Europe, and genetic information started suggesting they were fairer skinned with red hair."That's what I find particularly galling. A hundred or so years ago, the supposed similarity between Neanderthals and Aboriginal Australians was used as a justification to draw living modern humans out of the circle of humanity," she told WNYC."Now, because we see that Neanderthals have some relationship to modern-day Europeans, Neanderthals themselves an extinct species has been thrown into that circle of humanity."<h2>Rewriting our history</h2>We are still in the process of understanding Neanderthals and our relationship to them. As we begin to unpick the history of human and Neanderthal evolution, new scrutiny is being placed on the decision of scholars to separate the two and depict one as superior.When he revealed his research, Pääbo reflected on how <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ancient-humans-interbreed-with-mysterious-population-2020-2#:~:text=But%20a%20new%20study%20showed,Insider's%20homepage%20for%20more%20stories.">humans</a> living on the Earth today are rather exceptional — not necessarily because Homo sapiens are intrinsically better, but because there is very little time in the history of human evolution when Homo sapiens were the only hominin or human on the planet."Had Neanderthals and Denisovans survived, how would we deal with that today?" Pääbo said."Would we experience even worse racism against them than what we experience among us today — because they were in some respects really different — or could we think differently and say if we had them here today we would not just have one type of humans?" he added."I think both things are possible and it sort of reflects our view of humans and how we speculate about that."

Neanderthals and humans may belong to the same species, say scientists. It could rewrite the history of our evolution.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>What drove Neanderthals to extinction is one of the biggest mysteries in human history.</li><li>A new book “The Naked Neanderthal” says humans were the main cause thanks to their superior weapons.</li></ul>“Who the hell was this <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/early-riser-may-be-able-thank-your-neanderthal-dna-study-2023-12">Neanderthal</a>?”That's the question archaeologist Ludovic Slimak asks in his new book "The Naked Neanderthal."Neanderthals were humans' closest relatives. But something happened millennia ago that wiped them out.Today, there are 8.1 billion modern humans on Earth and 0 Neanderthals."Why are they no longer here?" It's one of the big questions researchers always ask about Neanderthals, University of Victoria archaeologist April Nowell told Business Insider.In the past, scientists depicted Neanderthals as less intelligent than humans. But, according to Slimak, an ancient Homo sapien was, in terms of creativity, “probably no match for <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-interbreeding-between-humans-and-neanderthals-affects-our-health-today-2023-6">Neanderthal populations</a> and was in all likelihood intellectually inferior,” he wrote. Many scientists suggest a combination of factors, including <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/neanderthal-extinction-earth-magnetic-poles-flip-climate-change-2021-2">climate change</a> and low fertility rates, wiped out Neanderthals. But Slimak thinks that, despite being intellectually inferior, early humans are to blame.In other words, if it weren't for us, Neanderthals might still be here.<h2>Who were the Neanderthals? </h2><div type="image" title="Two Neanderthal skeletons on display at The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History" height="1585" width="2003" msid="107735724" hostid="261" sizebytes="198430"></div>Humans and Neanderthals share a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/human-ancestors-were-down-1300-faced-extinction-900000-years-ago-2023-9">common ancestor</a> dating back to between 550,000 and 750,000 years ago. Compared to early humans, Neanderthals <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-were-the-neanderthals.html">were</a> muscular with a prominent brow and less pronounced chin. Neanderthals spread into northwestern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Southern Siberia long before Homo sapiens. They lived in some of these regions for hundreds of thousands of years until around 40,000 years ago, when they went extinct. <h2>Did humans kill off Neanderthals? </h2>Slimak suspects humans are to blame because of what he discovered in a cave in Southern France in 2008.By dating the soot where various artifacts were located, he determined that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/40000-year-bone-hints-humans-neanderthals-shared-cave-culture-2023-8">humans and Neanderthals overlapped</a> there around 54,000 years ago.It was the first time, he wrote, there was evidence of an encounter between humans and Neanderthals.There isn’t direct proof of conflict between the two species, Slimak noted."To find archaeological traces of a Neanderthal–Sapiens war we would need to uncover many more archaeological sites from this key period," he wrote.At this particular cave, however, Neanderthals did <a target="_blank" href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj9496">return</a>, followed by humans around 44,000 years ago. Since humans were the final species to occupy the cave, Slimak argues it's because they'd replaced those Neanderthals by wiping them out.<div type="image" title="A skull of a Neanderthal is seen in the foreground, the cast is partial, and missing bits of the skull are filled in. The skull is displayed in a museum, a person is seen in the background looking at the skulls." height="1217" width="1623" msid="107735725" hostid="261" sizebytes="89418"></div>Nowell said that while direct competition or conflict between the two species may have caused humans to take over the site Slimak studied, "it may not be the case everywhere."<h2>Humans' superior weapons</h2>Scientists have found relatively few <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/neanderthals-hunted-cave-lions-feasted-meat-study-2023-10">weapons belonging to Neanderthals</a>, Slimak wrote. However, Neanderthals were “excellent artisans,” making tools with “a creativity that is beyond us.”But this creativity was not enough to outwit humans’ regimented weapon making, which ultimately led to Neanderthals' extinction, according to Slimak.That's because the “modern humans who colonized Europe produced weapons that were both more numerous and more effective,” he wrote.Humans’ insistence on standardization led to uniform flints, and Neanderthals’ originality couldn’t compete.<h2>The Neanderthals in our genes</h2>Archaeologists haven't found much direct evidence of the two species living among one another, but genetic sequencing shows humans and Neanderthals <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-interbreeding-between-humans-and-neanderthals-affects-our-health-today-2023-6">interbred</a>.In some populations, the data <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6309227/">suggests</a> the two species mated multiple times over thousands of years.Yet genes can't tell us much about the nature of these interactions or how closely or amicably humans and Neanderthals lived. For that, archaeologists need more evidence like Slimak's French cave.Even with existing sites, it's tough.The difficulty with linking the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/homo-sapien-neanderthal-bones-german-cave-early-human-history-timeline-2024-2">first appearance of humans</a> and the last appearance of Neanderthals in Europe is that it relies on <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/white-sands-human-footprints-ancient-dated-new-evidence-2023-10">radiocarbon dating</a>, Nowell said.Scientists use the technique to measure the amount of carbon remaining in a substance and calculate the age based on carbon isotopes’ rate of decay. It’s most accurate until around 50,000 years ago, Nowell said. “The disappearance of Neanderthals is right at the edge” of Carbon-14 dating, Nowell said. “And that's exactly the time period that we're interested in.” There are areas in France and Spain where humans <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=c75ea1259f4f87d51e481e32f1cd7fae57502beef9d27be70df0e70c197341ed&amp;postID=65cbd40fe315c04c5d9a4e0e&amp;postSlug=neanderthals-extinct-humans-naked-neanderthal-book-2024-2&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41598-022-19162-z%23Sec6">do appear</a> to replace Neanderthals. With the current technology, though, it's difficult to tell whether <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/homo-sapien-neanderthal-bones-german-cave-early-human-history-timeline-2024-2">they cohabitated</a> for 1,000 years or 5,000 years first.If humans and Neanderthals coexisted for several millennia, their interactions might be more complex than the "fully-fledged conquest" that Slimak described.<h2>Neanderthals may have already been in decline</h2>Nowell thinks many archaeologists view creativity differently than Slimak. “Usually the argument is made that Homo sapiens are more creative,” she said. They were able to move into new environments and adapt. <div type="image" title="A model showing a Neanderthal family near a fire." height="2232" width="3968" msid="107735726" hostid="261" sizebytes="511650"></div>Moving into new spaces could have caused conflict, but human colonization is far from the only explanation for Neanderthals’ extinction, according to Nowell. “I think there's as many theories about what happened to them as there are paleoanthropologists,” Nowell said. “Most people would see it as a more nuanced model.”She noted that Neanderthals’ numbers were already dwindling when humans arrived, and there was a lack of genetic variation. Humans may have added to the stress, on top of a changing climate. “There's a whole bunch of things going on, for sure,” Nowell said.To Slimak, these other stresses simply don't matter as much as humans. "We can argue endlessly about dates, climate, or this or that other factor, but we have to accept that we are faced with a clear and radical replacement of population," he wrote."When Sapiens made an appearance, Neanderthal disappeared from the archaeological record."

'Intellectually inferior' humans caused Neanderthals to go extinct, a new book claims

<ul class="summary-list"><li>About 2% of our genes are shared with Neanderthals.</li><li>But some populations have slightly more Neanderthal in them, and it has been puzzling scientists. </li></ul>Most of us have a little bit of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/40000-year-bone-hints-humans-neanderthals-shared-cave-culture-2023-8">Neanderthal </a>DNA.Far from being the lumbering brutes that we once thought they were, a slew of recent studies suggest Neanderthals not only interacted with Homo sapiens, but also <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-interbreeding-between-humans-and-neanderthals-affects-our-health-today-2023-6">had children</a> with them.These sexual encounters mean Neanderthal genes have been passed down through the generations, and today most people can thank Neanderthals for <a target="_blank" href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1004944#:~:text=Thanks%20to%20genome%20sequencing%20and,origin%20in%20present%2Dday%20Eurasians.">about 2%</a> of their genomes.<div type="image" title="Neanderthal" height="2342" width="3500" msid="104557313" hostid="261" sizebytes="985712"></div>But that proportion varies, and some people have slightly more Neanderthal DNA than others. People in <a target="_blank" href="https://www.science.org/content/article/neanderthal-dna-you-carry-may-have-surprisingly-little-impact-your-looks-moods">East Asia</a>, notably, tend to have <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/neanderthal-genes-lower-risk-severe-coronavirus-2021-2">more Neanderthal DNA</a> in their genomes, but why they have more has long baffled scientists.That's because Neanderthals are thought to have mostly been European. Some Neanderthal remains were found as far East as the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ancient-humans-interbreed-with-mysterious-population-2020-2">Altai Mountains of Siberia</a>, but their bones are usually found in European countries.The logical conclusion would be that the first children of Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals would have been born in Europe. The next logical step is that Neanderthal DNA would get more diluted as Homo sapiens <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/human-genome-overlaps-neanderthals-ancestors-2021-7">mingled with other humans and hominins</a> when they spread away from the area where Neanderthals lived."So what's puzzling is that an area where we've never found any Neanderthal remains, there's more Neanderthal DNA," study author Mathias Currat, a geneticist at the University of Geneva, <a target="_blank" href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/18/world/neanderthal-ancestry-dna-percentage-scn/index.html">told CNN</a>.A new study, published in the journal <a target="_blank" href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg9817">Science Advances</a> Wednesday, may provide some answers.Currat and his co-authors drew from a database of 4,000 human genomes extracted from human remains dating back up to 40,000 years ago, and held by the Harvard Medical School.Their study found that up to about 20,000 years ago, European genomes were indeed richer in Neanderthal DNA than the Asian genomes they have on record.But that proportion shifted about 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. What the scientists think happened then is that a group of farming Homo sapiens from Anatolia, now Western Turkey, started mixing with hunter-gatherers in Western Europe.These farmers had a little less Neanderthal in them, so Western Europeans lost some of that ancestry as they mixed, Currat said, per CNN.What's not quite clear, however, is what happened in Asia. That's in part because the database the scientists were looking at had a lot less information about Asian genomes."It turns out that archaeological excavations have been much more numerous in Europe, which greatly facilitates the study of the genomes of European populations,'' said study author Claudio Quilodrán, a geneticist at the UNIGE Faculty of Science, in a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1004944#:~:text=Thanks%20to%20genome%20sequencing%20and,origin%20in%20present%2Dday%20Eurasians.">press release</a> accompanying the findings.

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