An article published in Nature in February 2025 (Ben Arous, E., Blinkhorn, J.A., Elliott, S. et al. Humans in Africa’s wet tropical forests 150 thousand years ago. Nature 640, 402–407 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08613-y) found that the belief that humans didn't enter the African jungles until recently was mistaken. The paper found "late Middle Pleistocene material culture and a wet tropical forest in southern Côte d'Ivoire, a region of present-day rainforest... demonstrat[ing] that Africa's forests were not a major ecological barrier for H. sapiens as early as around 150 ka."
I found it interesting because of the different papers (see the list at the end of this post) suggesting archaic admixture into modern humans in Western Africa, which does indicate that modern African humans did enter the jungles in that region. But, in this paper, the authors mention stone tool assemblages which in my opinion seem rather "primitive", lacking the refined appearance you'd expect from tools made by human beings 150 kya. After all, our species is said to have developed in Africa 300 kya, and left it in two waves, one, around 100 kya which is believed to have failed, and the second one that peopled the World, 60 kya. So, why would they produce tools that look so primitive? See below, an image with the upper "Unit C" tools dated to 20-12 ky and the older "Unit D" dated to 55-150 kya.
The more recent upper layer exhibits, according to the authors Levallois flakes and points, while the underlying and older stone artifacts are more massive and coarse-looking: "The assemblage in Unit D, featuring large tools alongside a small tool component, may support long-held views that the diverse heavy-duty tool assemblages seen in Central and West Africa are convergent adaptive solutions to tropical forest habitation."
Sangoan toolage
In the Supplementary Material, the authors mention two types of stone industries present in Pleistocene Africa, the Sangoan and the Lupemban. Sangoan, first discovered in Sangoa, Uganda "described as late Acheulian adaptations, transitional between the Acheulean and the MSA, or as belonging to the early MSA. They are generally characterised as featuring ‘rugged’ or ‘heavy-duty’ core tools, dominated by thick bifaces, picks, choppers, and core scrapers, referred to collectively as large cutting tools (LCTs)."
The literature describes them as a transition from Early Stone Age Acheulean tool technology to Middle Stone Age tools. To me, as an amateyr un the field, this spells tools made by less advanced hominins. Acheulean tools were the mark of H. erectus, and these crude Sangoan tools are common in Central Africa during the Upper Pleistocene, and coexist with Modern Humans in West Africa 150 kya? Strange overlapping of superarchaic hominins with modern H. sapiens.
The coarse and heavy build of Sangoan tools is believed to be due to their use in forested environment, for chopping or digging for edible roots and tubers. They have been found at Kalambo Falls in Zambia and dated to 500-300 kya. Clearly not the work of Homo sapiens, we appeared only 300 kya. In Simbi, Kenya their age is between 50-200 kya, indicating a survival of an ancient technology overlapping the appearance of modern humans and possibly, the survival of the archaics that made the Sangoan stone tools.
Lupemban
The Lupemban, on the other hand, named for a brook in Zaire, is different it displays careful crafting using Levallois core and flake technology, resulting in refined lanceolate, bifacial points. The oldest Lupemban tools are 266-132 kya. Overlapping with the more primitive Sangoan, as if two different groups of less, and more advanced hominins created them to exploit the forests and jungles (see this source for a comprehensive text on this industry).
Closing Comments
Rather than showing that modern humans were living in the West African jungles 150,000 years ago, the paper by J.A., Elliott, S. et al. seems to suggest an overlapping of different people in that area, namely archaics with early stone age Lupemban tools and modern humans with Sangoan ones.
Why would archaeologists ignore the signal provided by the Acheulean-like Sangoan tools and attribute them to modern humans living in a forested environment? In Eurasia, stone technologies, like the Mousterian are a clear indication of Neanderthal craft, why wouldn't the Sangoan be taken as a lithic technology developed by non-sapiens people? It seems to me that archaeologists focused on Africa have the obligation to defend the antiquity of Homo sapiens in that continent and ignore facts that indicate the opposite.
Below are some posts on the admixture of archaics and moderns within Africa: ↺
- May 2018: Archaic hominins admixed with Pygmies in Africa, citing: Psing Hsun Shieh et al, 2016. Summary: at least one introgression of archaics into pygmies ~9 kya.
- May 2018: More on archaic introgression into H. sapiens in Africa: the source of African's genetic diversity, citing: Hammer et al., 2011. Summary: modern Africans' DNA has a ~2% introgression that took place ~35 kya, from an archaic that split from our lineage 700 kya.ed DNA, ) that introgressed ~35 kya from an archaic population that split from the ancestors of anatomically modern humans ~700 kya
- May 2019: Archaic Ghost population admixed with Modern Humans in Africa, citing: Lorente-Galdos et al, 2019. Summary: a divergent ghost archaic population that split from the ancestors of modern humans 528 kya introgressed into Africans at the following frequencies:~ 4.0% in Khoisan, ~ 4.3% in Mbuti Pygmies, and ~ 5.8% in Mandenka.
- June 2019: Archaic humans admixed with modern humans in Africa, citing: S. Langley, Miga, Karpen, C. Langley, 2018. Summary:a distinct, old introgressed archaic lineage (~1.1 MYA) consistent with recent admixture with an extinct archaic in Africa.
- February 2026: On the Diversity of Africans, citing: Durvasula and Sankararaman, 2020. Summary: introgression into four West African populations, with frequencies of 2 to 19% from an archaic population that diverged before the split of Neanderthals and modern humans. It took plase 43 kya (95% HPD: 6 - 124 kya).
- February 2026: Diversity in Africa. Some explanations on why it is so diverse, citing: Skoglund et al., 2017, Jakobsson et al., 2025 and Padilla-Iglesias et al., 2025. Summary: deep stratification in Africa may come from admixture with an unknown archaic African group predating the divergence of Humans from Neandertals and Denisovans. Western Africans may have introgressed with archaics.
- April 2026: A New March 2026: Paper on Archaic introgressions in Humans, citing: Zhang, Biddanda, Johnson, O’Dushlaine, Moorja, (2026). Summary: two introgressions with super-archaics. (i) inside of Africa with a ghost population that diverged from ours over 500 kya it is found in all humans, Africans and non-Africans.
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