The African Origins of Humanity

c. 300,000 years ago

The fossil and genetic evidence for the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa.

Tap Next to read each record, or tap Contents to go straight to one. Every fact carries a small [Source] mark: tap it to see where the fact comes from.

About 300,000 years ago Proven

Jebel Irhoud

The oldest known fossils of our own species, Homo sapiens, about 300,000 years old.[Source 1]

At Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, scientists found the remains of several people: skulls, teeth and bones.[Source 2] Their faces are close to the faces of people living today. Their braincases are longer and lower than ours, an older shape.[Source 3]

Beside them lay stone tools of the Middle Stone Age, made by the Levallois method of shaping a stone core before striking off a point.[Source 4] Some of the flint tools had been heated in fire, and the heat let scientists date them by thermoluminescence. The study published in Nature in 2017 places the tools and the fossils at 315,000 years ago, give or take 34,000 years.[Source 5]

The find pushed the record of our species back by about 100,000 years.[Source 6] The team's leader, Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute, said: "Long before the out-of-Africa dispersal of Homo sapiens, there was dispersal within Africa."[Source 7]

Where: Jebel Irhoud, Morocco

Today: Morocco

What was found: Skulls, teeth and bones of several people, with stone tools

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. Daniel Richter et al., The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age (Nature, vol. 546, p. 293, 2017).
  2. 2.News report. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Press release on the Jebel Irhoud finds (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, via ScienceDaily, 2017).
  3. 3.News report. New Moroccan fossils suggest humans lived and evolved across Africa 100,000 years earlier than we thought (The Conversation, 2017).
  4. 4.News report. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Press release on the Jebel Irhoud finds (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, via ScienceDaily, 2017).
  5. 5.Scholarly. Daniel Richter et al., The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age (Nature, vol. 546, p. 293, 2017).
  6. 6.News report. New Moroccan fossils suggest humans lived and evolved across Africa 100,000 years earlier than we thought (The Conversation, 2017).
  7. 7.News report. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Press release on the Jebel Irhoud finds (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, via ScienceDaily, 2017).

At least 230,000 years ago Proven

Omo Kibish

The oldest known Homo sapiens of eastern Africa, at least 230,000 years old.[Source 1]

The remains known as Omo I were found in the late 1960s in the Omo Kibish Formation, in southwestern Ethiopia, in the East African Rift.[Source 2] For decades their accepted age was under 200,000 years.[Source 3]

The fossils lay below a thick layer of volcanic ash. In 2022 a team led by Céline Vidal of the University of Cambridge matched that ash to a great eruption of the Shala volcano, more than 400 kilometers away, and dated the eruption.[Source 4] Because the fossils lie beneath the ash, they must be older than it. Their study in Nature gives a minimum age of 233,000 years, give or take 22,000.[Source 5]

Where: The Omo Kibish Formation, southwestern Ethiopia

Today: Ethiopia

What was found: The remains known as Omo I

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. Céline M. Vidal et al., Age of the oldest known Homo sapiens from eastern Africa (Nature, vol. 601, p. 579, 2022).
  2. 2.News report. Earliest human remains in eastern Africa dated to more than 230,000 years ago (University of Cambridge, 2022).
  3. 3.News report. Earliest human remains in eastern Africa dated to more than 230,000 years ago (University of Cambridge, 2022).
  4. 4.Scholarly. Céline M. Vidal et al., Age of the oldest known Homo sapiens from eastern Africa (Nature, vol. 601, p. 579, 2022).
  5. 5.Scholarly. Céline M. Vidal et al., Age of the oldest known Homo sapiens from eastern Africa (Nature, vol. 601, p. 579, 2022).

About 160,000 to 154,000 years ago Proven

Herto

The skulls of two adults and a child, about 160,000 years old: strong evidence that modern humans emerged in Africa.[Source 1]

Near the village of Herto, in the Middle Awash area of Ethiopia, scientists of the University of California at Berkeley, Ethiopia and other countries found the fossil skulls of two adults and a child.[Source 2] Dated by the argon-argon method, the fossils and the tools around them are between 160,000 and 154,000 years old.[Source 3]

The team, led by Tim White and Berhane Asfaw, wrote in Nature in 2003 that the skulls' "anatomy and antiquity constitute strong evidence of modern-human emergence in Africa."[Source 4] Alongside them lay stone tools of the Acheulean and the Middle Stone Age, and hippopotamus bones that had been butchered again and again.[Source 5]

Where: Herto, in the Middle Awash of Ethiopia

Today: Ethiopia

What was found: The skulls of two adults and a child, with stone tools

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. Tim D. White, Berhane Asfaw et al., Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia (Nature, vol. 423, pp. 742-747, 2003).
  2. 2.News report. Earliest Homo sapiens fossils discovered in Ethiopia (Innovations Report (University of California at Berkeley news), 2003).
  3. 3.Scholarly. J. Desmond Clark, Yonas Beyene, Giday WoldeGabriel et al., Stratigraphic, chronological and behavioural contexts of Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia (Nature, vol. 423, pp. 747-752, 2003).
  4. 4.Scholarly. Tim D. White, Berhane Asfaw et al., Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia (Nature, vol. 423, pp. 742-747, 2003).
  5. 5.Scholarly. J. Desmond Clark, Yonas Beyene, Giday WoldeGabriel et al., Stratigraphic, chronological and behavioural contexts of Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia (Nature, vol. 423, pp. 747-752, 2003).

Studies of 1987 and 2009 Proven

The Genetic Record

The DNA of living people points to the same place as the fossils: Africa.[Source 1]

In 1987 Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking and Allan Wilson published a study in Nature of the mitochondrial DNA of 147 people from five regions of the world: Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and New Guinea.[Source 2] They traced all of it back to one woman, and wrote that she lived "probably in Africa."[Source 3] Twenty-five years later, Stoneking said the current view was "remarkably similar to the conclusion in the original article."[Source 4]

In 2009 a team led by Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania published in Science a study of 121 African populations, 4 African American populations and 60 populations outside Africa. Tishkoff called it "the largest study to date of African genetic diversity in the nuclear genome."[Source 5] They found more genetic diversity in Africa than anywhere else on earth.[Source 6] Their paper opens with the words: "Africa is the source of all modern humans."[Source 7]

Where: The DNA of living people around the world

What was found: One shared mother line, and the greatest genetic diversity on earth, both in Africa

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. Sarah A. Tishkoff, Floyd A. Reed, Françoise R. Friedlaender et al., The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans (Science, vol. 324, p. 1035, 2009).
  2. 2.Scholarly. Dorothy R. Haskett, "Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution" (1987), by Rebecca Louise Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan Charles Wilson (The Embryo Project Encyclopedia, Arizona State University, 2014).
  3. 3.Scholarly. Rebecca L. Cann, Mark Stoneking, Allan C. Wilson, Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution (Nature, vol. 325, p. 31, 1987).
  4. 4.Scholarly. Dorothy R. Haskett, "Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution" (1987), by Rebecca Louise Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan Charles Wilson (The Embryo Project Encyclopedia, Arizona State University, 2014).
  5. 5.Scholarly. Penn study of African genetic diversity (news release) (University of Pennsylvania, 2009).
  6. 6.Scholarly. Penn study of African genetic diversity (news release) (University of Pennsylvania, 2009).
  7. 7.Scholarly. Sarah A. Tishkoff, Floyd A. Reed, Françoise R. Friedlaender et al., The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans (Science, vol. 324, p. 1035, 2009).