Misterious Middle Eastern (non-African) homo, not Neanderthals or modern humans (Denisovans?)

Two 2021 papers published in Science, one by Israel Hershkovitz et al. (A Middle Pleistocene Homo from Nesher Ramla, Israel, Science 372, 1424-1428. DOI:10.1126/science.abh3169 🔒), the other by Yossi Zaidner et al. (Middle Pleistocene Homo behavior and culture at 140,000 to 120,000 years ago and interactions with Homo sapiens.Science 372, 1429-1433. DOI:10.1126/science.abh3020 🔒) describe hominins living in what is now Israel using stone tool technologies associated to both modern humans and Neanderthals yet different two both of those lineages. These fossils have been dated to around 120,000 ti 140,000 years ago (120 - 140 kya), in the Middle Pleistocene (or MP).

Not Modern Humans or Neanderthals

The second paper states that "The evidence from Nesher Ramla demonstrates that late MP Homo fully mastered advanced Levallois technology that until only recently was linked to either H. sapiens or Neanderthals." It also mentions that this stone knapping technology was due to contact between different human groups ("cultural diffusion"), and this implies that they admixed: "These results are consistent with a growing body of genetic studies suggesting that a gene flow existed between divergent archaic Homo populations and H. sapiens during the late Middle and early Late Pleistocene. Our findings provide archaeological support for close cultural interactions between different human lineages during the Middle Paleolithic period and suggest that contacts between MP Homo and H. sapiens had already occurred prior to 120 ka."

The first paper proposes that these Middle Pleistocene hominins, which they call NR, after Nesher Ramla, the site in Israe where they were found, are distinct from both modern humans and Neanderthals. They present the following unrooted phylogenetic tree (Fig 2b) which they describe as having "NR-1 close to the origin of the branch leading to African MP Homo, close to the split from the H. erectus branch and to European MP Homo and Neanderthals (including Atapuerca SH), and far from early and recent H. sapiens".

Phylogenetic tree for the Nesher Ramla homo. Fig 2b in Hershkovitz et al., 2021

Notice how it is midway between the Eurasian Homo erectus, and the African MP hominins (like the ergaster, and H. rhodesiensis).

The authors point out that their analysis of the fossils show that they are a mossaic, with "a unique combination of archaic and Neanderthal features, supporting the existence of a local, Levantine population at the final MP... showing that an affiliation of the NR fossils with early and recent H. sapiens is highly unlikely, but that it is impossible to establish whether NR fossils are more likely to be classified as MP Homo, Neanderthal, or H. erectus (the latter for the parietal only)" So, it is different from the Homo sapiens lineage yet similar to erectus, Neanderthals or MP homo. They probabilities assigned by the study are: 41% Homo erectus, 34% MP Homo, and 25% Neanderthal.

Due to their recent age of 120 to 140 ky, the researchers suggest that they are the last survivors of an ancient Southwestern Asian homo group that could include other specimens found in the Middle East, like the Quesem and Zuttiyeh Caves individuals, and also Tabun Cavre. If this is the case they lived here between 420 and 120 ky ago. They could have admixed with the Homo sapiens of Misliya Cave, and also the Neanderthals of Skhul and Qafzeh.

They propose that the Nesher Ramla Homo is the source of the populations found in Western Europe such as the Arago and Atapuerca Sima de los Huesos (SH) specimens: "... contribution of Levantine Homo groups carrying Neanderthal-like traits to European Homo lineages. The NR Homo, carrying Neanderthal-like traits, could thus represent the “source” population... according to which Western Europe was repopulated through a series of successive migrations." The paper's bibliography cites de Castro et al., 2019, who proposed an explanation for the differences between them: "...Whereas the SH teeth present an almost morphological identity with European Neanderthals, the Arago teeth exhibit a combination of plesiomorphic as well as some Neanderthal-derived features. In addition, the Arago crown dimensions are remarkably larger than those from SH, the differences being statistically significant for most variables. We hypothesize that during the Middle Pleistocene the European continent was settled at different points in time by hominin groups coming from Southwest Asia, probably from a common mother population evolving in this latter region."

What I find interesting, is that these are Eurasian hominins, all of them, none are African. It somehow hints at a Middle Eastern origin of the population that led to Neanderthals, with a link to Homo erectus, and which is also associated with Mid Pleistocene Western European hominins like the Atapuerca Homo antecessor. The MP African hominins are not even close to these Levantine people.

The paper does not state it, but it follows logically, that modern humans could have originated in this region too.

Denisovans?

A very smart suggestion posted by John Hawks is that these Nesher Ramla people were Denisovans!

Hawks wrote: "One possibility may fit well, and I've not seen anybody mention it. We already know that there was a third population out there: the Denisovans. The DNA data from central Asia show us that Neandertal and Denisovan populations were sometimes in contact with each other, across more than 100,000 years of time, and that they mixed where they met. We do not know what the geographic range of Denisovans may have been across the southern tier of Asia. Many researchers have emphasized the Denisovans as an “eastern” population, due to the high representation of Denisovan ancestry in island southeast Asia and Oceania. But we have very little fossil evidence about the ancient populations of India and Pakistan, and the known Neandertals from Teshik-Tash, Uzbekistan and Shanidar, Iraq, are more recent than 100,000 years. So why not Denisovans in the Levant before 120,000 years ago?"

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

The odd thing about Homo rhodesiensis

A research paper published in Nature in April 2020, titled Dating the skull from Broken Hill, Zambia, and its position in human evolution, that I didn't spot at that time just when the pandemic of Covid 19 locked us all up in Argentina, dated the original skull of Homo rhodesiensis, known as BH1 (Broken Hill 1) and it is much younger than expected for such a primitive hominin.

The paper by Grün, R., Pike, A., McDermott, F. et al. (Nature 580, 372–375 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2165-4) reports how they studied the Pleistocene skull discovered in 1921 in a mine at Broken Hill (now Kabwe), in what then was known as Rhodesia (now Zambia), from a site known as Broken Hill. The specimen had been described by Woodward that same year and named the Rhodesian man (Homo rhodesiensis), a new species. Currently it has been included into the same line as the European Homo heidelbergensis and therefore, the ancestor of Neanderthals and maybe, also modern humans.

Those who studied it, dated it to around 500,000 years ago but did so assuming it was similar to the European Homo heidelbergensis which is that age, and also using estimations based on correlations with other sites in Africa and fauna found at the site.

That age makes it old enough to be an ancestor of both Neanderhtals and Homo sapiens, and inside Africa it provides support to the African origin of both species. However, and this is a crucial point, the original site at Broken Hill was razed as it was mined away, and in the 1920s, dating of ancient specimens was more guess work and good will than science. So, Grün et al., decided to date it with modern technology, analyzing the skull itself.

A very recent primitive hominin

They found that its "best age estimate of 299 ± 25 thousand years" which is coincidental with the date given for the first modern humans, in North Africa, and the very primitive Homo naledi in South Africa! The authors write: "The result suggests that later Middle Pleistocene Africa contained multiple contemporaneous hominin lineages (that is, Homo sapiens, H. heidelbergensis/H. rhodesiensis and Homo naledi)" which is quite surprising. They try to play down this odd situation by saying that in Asia the situation was similar: "where Homo neanderthalensis, the Denisovans, Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonensis and perhaps also Homo heidelbergensis and Homo erectus were found contemporaneously". Indeed, but it should be noted that the minute Flores and Luzon people were isolated on insular habitats. Erectus was on the brink of extinction, and regarding Denisovans and Neanderthals it is widely accepted that they admixed and trysted with modern humans, and with each other (and, regarding Denisovans, very likely with erectus). But when it comes to Africa we are asked to believe that modern humans appeared and never mixed with any of these archaics that populated the continents.

But the researchers can't escape the fact that a very recent yet primitive hominin co-existed inside of Africa with modern humans, the write: "The age estimate also raises further questions about the mode of evolution of H. sapiens in Africa and whether H. heidelbergensi/H. rhodesiensis was a direct ancestor of our species."

Correct! If modern humans had already evolved 300 ky ago, then, how could the Homo rhodesiensis with that same age, be our ancestor? Furthermore, it has prmitivie traits: solid skull (relatively large at 1280 cm³, low forehead, prominent brow ridges.

A paper by Balzeau et al., 2017 studied the shape of the BH1 skull, and its dimensions and thickness, comparing it to other archaic hominins. It reported that its thick parietal bones resemble the Homo erectus and is unlike the "morphology observed in Neandertals and H. sapiens." Together with the Petralona skull (equally primitive, but found in Greece and also recent —286 ky) the Rhodesian man shares "a thick frontal torus or a thickened postero-lateral parietal bone... The main peculiarity of BH1 is related to its large, thick frontal torus and to high thickness values for the vault." The paper concludes that it is distinct from Neanderthals and modern humans and similar to the Homo erectus sensu lato (in a broad manner): ".. this fossil does not exhibit the apomorphic conditions observed in either Neandertals or among H. sapiens."

See the skull below, and judge for yourself:

Side and front views of the Kabwe skull, Broken Hill, Rhodesian man. Source

I have posted often, that Africa was a melting pot of primitive hominins, blending into the stock of African Homo sapiens, and adding diversity to its genetic pool.

H. Rhodesiensis

Some scholars have proposed a new name for the specimen, dropping "Rhodesian man" and renaming it Bodo man, or Homo bodoensis (yes, wokeness seeks to decolonize anthropology and remove the tainted, imperialist reference to Cecil Rhodes who gave his name to Rhodesia). However, this will not solve the issue of its recent age and perhaps, its location on a dead end branch of hominins. In a recent post we mentioned a paper that analyzed the shape of the faces of humans and ancestral hominins. It reported that "The evidence instead suggests that the large and non-H. sapiens-like faces of Bodo and Broken Hill 1 ... represent taxonomic diversity in the African MP record, which could exclude the large fossils assigned to H. heidelbergensis and H. rhodesiensis as representative of an ancestral morph for H. sapiens." Meaning that they are not our ancestors.

Finally, the similarity of the Rhodesian man and Petralona was noted by Falgueres et al., 2025 and they place them together, it in a parallel and independent lineage to that of Neanderthals: " our view, the similarities in midfacial and cranial contours between Kabwe and Petralona and the absence of true Neanderthal apomorphies in their midfaces suggest that European and African samples often assigned to H. heidelbergensis (Stringer, 2012; Rightmire, 2017) remained closely related during most of the Middle Pleistocene, alongside and independent of the Neanderthal lineage. Our results from dating the matrix attached to the Petralona cranium suggest that like the Kabwe cranium, the Petralona cranium may date to about 300 ka, consistent with their persistence into the later Middle Pleistocene" They also note that their work supports the notion put forward by Quam et al., 2023 and Ashton et al., 2016, that Middle Pleistocene hominins can be grouped into two separate lineages:

One lacking Neanderthal-like features, that includes the following speciments: "Mauer, Mala Balanica, Montmaurin, Visogliano, and one of the Arago mandibles" as well as the more recent Petralona skull. The second group has Neanderthal-like features, and comprises "the Atapuerca, SH fossils, Arago 2, and specimens from Payre, Ehringsdorf, and Bau de l'Aubesier."

Taken together the data seems to suggest that Homo heidelbergensis and the Rhodesian homo from Africa may not be linked to Neanderthals or modern humans.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Blood Groups support an "Into Africa - Out of Eurasia" migration of modern humans

Rereading a research paper published in January 2025 (Mazières S, Condemi S, El Nemer W, Chiaroni J. Rapid change in red cell blood group systems after the main Out of Africa of Homo sapiens. Sci Rep. 2025 Jan 23;15(1):1597. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-83023-0. PMID: 39848961; PMCID: PMC11757997), I noticed that the authors attempted to adapt the facts to the Out of Africa theory even though they point in an opposite direction.

The abstract states that "we noted that the blood group allele diversity in the Neandertals remained unchanged since 120,000 yBP, while H. sapiens conquered Eurasia with blood group alleles presently exclusive to non-African populations, suggesting they may have differentiated right after the Out of Africa, between 70,000 and 45,000 yBP. Notably, Ust’Ishim possessed unknown alleles that may illustrate the lost genetic heritage of the early Eurasians. Lastly, Neandertals shared a unique Rh haplotype from which we updated the current RHD phylogeny."

The paper notes that the oldest modern humans in Eurasia carry red blood cell variants that are absent in Africans: "the oldest genomes available (Ust’Ishim, Bacho Kiro, Zlaty Kun, Tianyan, Oase1, Kostenki14, 36-45 ka) show that H. sapiens entered in Eurasia with a set of functional alleles absent in Neandertals and Denisova, and already derived from their ancestral state... Presently, some of these blood group alleles are only found in non-African populations."

How could this be possible? If humans originated in Africa, the original pool should be found there, and the Eurasians, after a bottleneck due to the Out of Africa migration, should have fewer original variants. But instead, they find none of these variants in Africa.

The paper invents a standstill in Iran, the "Persian Standstill" where the new Eurasian humans evolved their own, distinct variants! Below is the paper's text:

"Given the wide distribution of the derived alleles amongst the earliest H.sapiens of Eurasia coupled with their total absence in Africa, a first scenario could assume that these alleles have emerged in African H. sapiens before the Out of Africa, spread in Eurasia, then disappeared in Africa only. It would be tempting to point to natural selection, but the joint disappearance of independent alleles coding for phenotypes of a wide variety of susceptibility to natural selection is unlikely. Moreover, given that the highest gene diversity is found in Africa and that the expansion of H.sapiens is characterized by an initial founder effect, these alleles should be found in African populations. An alternative could be an outbreak of red cell blood group alleles outside Africa right before the conquest of Eurasia. Genetic, lithic and paleoecological evidence from the Initial Upper Paleolithic indicated that the late phase of H. sapiens expansion outside Africa circa 70 − 60,000 years ago was followed by a standstill of at least 15,000 yBP in the Persian Plateau. Analogously to the Beringian occupation ca. 20,000 yBP during which the Beringian populations paused several millennia and differentiated before entering the Americas with genetic polymorphisms shared by Native Americans only, H. sapiens could have resided long enough in the Persian Plateau to differentiate. This view makes Western Asia a good candidate for the place of incubation of the functional ABO*O.01.02, FY*01, RHCE*03, KEL*02.07, FUT1*01.02 c.35 C > T, and GYPB*04 before expansion towards East (Tianyaun), North (Zlatý kůň, Ust’Ishim) and Western Eurasia (Oase1, Bacho Kiro) more than 45ky ago."

Why propose a standstill in Persia? An unexplored alternative is that humans originated in Eurasia, and lost part of their diversity as they migrated out of Asia and into Africa. There they settled in Eastern Africa and gradually spread into the continent, losing diversity as they advanced, and taking up archaic versions as they admixed with older homo lineages in Africa.

Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Humans

Surprisingly, the paper stated that "H. sapiens entered in Eurasia with a set of functional alleles absent in Neandertals and Denisova, and already derived from their ancestral state" so, they were present in modern humans in Asia and absent in our Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestors but, and this is relevant, "Neandertal and Denisova, two archaic hominid populations inhabiting Eurasia, expressed blood groups currently found in sub-Saharans... For two blood group systems, RH and KEL, the Neandertal alleles are almost exclusively found in modern populations from Sub-Saharan Africa" This suggests that the ancestral populations of Neanderthals and Denisovans, that originated in Asia, migrated into Africa, surviving through admixture with hominins inside AFrica. Their variants are now only found in the red blood cells of populations South of the Sahara. Outside of Africa, the larger population that evolved into modern humans mutated into a derived form, absent in both Denisovans and Neanderthals.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

East Asian hominins in the Pleistocene

A paper published by Vialet, 2018 attempts to understand how modern humans settled East Asia. It reports that different "lineages" must have interacted to explain the outcome. People from the islands in South East Asia could have contributed to the final admixture, depending on variable sea levels. Vialet analyzes a scenario with "demographic “sources” and “sinks” and where repeated colonization, extinctions and recombination may help explain the morphological variability of the population." Clearly, Denisovans, possible extant archaics like Homo erectus interacted with modern humans in this region.

Vialet cites Zanolli (2013) who notes a reduction in the size of teeth, which differs from the classic Asian Homo erectus s.s. (sensu stricto) and, interestingly ntoes that "Such a degree of dental reduction, from both a morphological (i.e., molar inter-ratio, loss of main cusps) and a metric perspective has been only identified in the Middle Pleistocene sample from Sima de los Huesos, in Atapuerca" in Spain. This means that teeth became smaller and are similar to the Atapuerca hominins, similar to those of modern humans, but, they don't know why!

Atapuerca remains have provided nuclear DNA that links them to Neanderthals, however, their mitochondrial DNA placed them very close to te Denisovans.

Zanolli is at a loss when it comes to explaining this situation, and speculate that the smaller teeth may be due to "more complex scenarios envisaging frequent population interchanges (possibly from sources to sinks) and/or regional variation by isolation" and also "possible connections between Asia and Europe."

They tend to believe that this dental reduction "is more likely resulted either from replacement or introgression by admixture with continental immigrating groups" Interestingly the African Homo heidelbergensis" and the Chinsese Homo erectus as well as the early specimens from Sanigran in Indonesia share similar featues.

These articles show that Denisovans, Neanderthals, and their Spanish ancestor in Atapuerca are linked to East Asian people. Somehow, these people replaced the classic Eurasian erectus. They surely interacted with them, admixing and replacing them. The hominins living in East Asia when modern humans reached the area (or evolved there, becoming modern humans), carried the signs of Eurasian people. Where does the Out of Africa myth fit in this panorama?

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo ergaster wasn't an erectus

When the skulls of Homo erectus were discovered in Java, Indonesia, and Beijing, China ~100 years ago, they cemented the notion that modern humans evolved from these Asian hominins. They had relatively big brains, made stone tools, and were upright creatures. There was no similar fossil in Africa until a skull from Kobi Fora was discovered in 1975 and assigned to a new species which was named Homo ergater ("working" man) it was erectus-like (but differed from it), and it was old. This boosted the position of the African origin of humans, so it fitted neatly into the Out Of Africa (OOA) theory. The erectus of Asia were assigned to a branch named Homo erectus sensu stricto, or strict-sense erectus, the classic fossils. And they, together with the African ergasters were grouped as sensu lato (broad sense) erectus.

However, there has been a controversy ever since, and it is likely that they are not related, and that ergaster vanished in Africa without leading to the ancestors of modern human beings.

Antón 2014 summarizes the situation as follows: "Proponents generally allocate early African Homo erectus fossils dating from c. 1.8–1.4 Ma to Homo ergaster, mainly on the basis of smaller, more gracile crania and a lack of robust cranial suprastructures. In this schema, the geographic distribution of Homo erectus sensu stricto is restricted to Asian localities with a few examples (e.g., OH 9) of back migration into Africa. Homo ergaster includes the early African and Georgian specimens attributed by others to H. erectus and is therefore posited as the ancestor to Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo sapiens..." This quote mentions an "Into Africa" back migration of Eurasian erectus, assigning an OH 9 fossil to this event. Remarkable!

The OH 9 sample was discovered by Louis Leakey in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, in 1960. It is approximately 1.4 million years old and has a large brain. In fact, it is the oldest hominin discovered until now, with a braincase capacity above on litre (it is 1,067 cm³). Leakey himself recognized it as erectus, calling it "Chellean man" because in the same sedimentary layer he uneaerthed Acheulean-like stone tools that are the hallmark of Homo erectus. Yet, it is unlike the ergaster fossils, and more or less overlaps with the last of them.

So, according to Antón 2014, ergaster is more gracile (smaller, slender) and the ancestor of the Dmanisi specimens in the Caucasus and ancestor of the sensu stricto erectus, implying that ergaster migrated out of Africa and originated the Homo georgicus found in Dmanisi, and the later erectines. However, it may be possible that the situation is exactly the opposite: that Homo ergaster descends from a Eurasian lineage of hominins, that originated the Dmanisi and erectines, and also migrated into Africa, leading to the hominins there, like Homo habilis, Homo rudolfiensis, and later, Homo ergaster. Real erectus originated and evolved in Asia, and migrated into Africa much later.

The Eurasian origin of Homo erectus

Chris Stinger in an interview (see it online here) suggests that the oldest hominins may not even be homo, they were something else, below I transcribe the relevant part, starting at 35' 45" in the video:

"...I mean it depends again what we call homo erectus. So on our Yunxian paper we obviously analyzed some of these earlier skulls and for us there is a clear erectus group based on the original fossils from Java and the ones from China. They are the real erectus if you like and then there are earlier things in Africa and in Dmanisi in Georgia. Those things on our analyses are probably not actually Homo erectus. They are something different. I mean, you know, we couldn't solve everything in our paper and say what they were, but we think that they are maybe not what you could call real erectus. There's another name around called Homo ergaster, workman, work human. Um, which was given to some fossils from Africa. Um, so sometimes called African Homo erectus, but also Homo ergaster. So that name is also around and could be applied to some of these earlier things. They would still be homo and therefore human in my view. But yes, there might be an earlier species before erectus. Um and in fact there might be even more than one species. So the Dmanisi material from Georgia 1.8 million years old that's been called the first Homo erectus out of out of Africa. Um some people and I'm beginning to join them think that that isn't really Homo erectus. It's something more primitive. Uh and that is the sort of creature that might have given rise to, you know, Homo floresiensis eventually, over in Flores or Homo luzoinensis eventually, over in the Philippines. So we could be looking at something that actually is prehuman even though at the moment there's a homo name attached to it. Some of those things could turn out to be prehuman. So for me, Homo erectus as we know it from Asia is is the first definite human for me and it dates back to you know one and a half million years probably. And then there are some things before where it's tricky to know whether they really are over the line to be homo. Some of them are still small-brained. Some of them still had adaptations in their skeleton which shows that they were either spending time in the trees or they had those remains still in their skeleton showed the traces of tree living. Whereas erectus for me as we know it later on is the first committed ground living in completely you know given up life in the trees and fully committed to life on the ground walking on two legs. So that for me is a big step forward and humans have done that. Some of these earlier things at around 2 million maybe are still in that process of transition."

Stringer mentions the paper The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium elucidates the origin of Homo longi and the Denisovans co-authored by himself and Feng et al., 2025. He is quite categorical about Dmanisi, and ergaster as being prehuman, or, not homo. They are possibly the same creature that originated the Flores Island hobbit or the Luzon hominins.

Ergaster

The label "Homo ergaster" has been assigned to a collection of fragmentary skulls, and assimilated to the erectine group. But these African "erectus" are different from the genuine Asian ones. They are more dimorphic (Sexual dimorphism is when males and females of the same species have different features, like colors, markings, and importantly in the case of primates, body sizes). Large, aggressive males can control more females by fending off rivals if they are bigger bodied. Modern humans are far less dimorphic as we don't rely on aggressive behavior but on cooperation between males. Asian erectus also show a lower dimorphism in comparison to African hominins.

Villmoare 2019 explored the dimorphism of erectines analyzing footprints and found African ones to be futher from modern human sizes, and Asian ones to be closer:

"Here we present an alternative, using footprints from near Ileret, Kenya, to assess the sexual dimorphism of presumptive African Homo erectus at 1.5 Ma... Our results indicate that East African Homo erectus was more dimorphic than modern Homo sapiens, although less so than highly dimorphic apes... As a species, H. erectus shows considerable temporal and geographic variation and, as Plavcan notes, only the African sample (in which he includes Dmanisi) shows a sufficiently high degree of variation to falsify the hypothesis that the species had acquired the relatively monomorphic human-like condition. In his analysis, the high variation in the African sample was driven by the small size of KNM-ER 42700 and the large size of OH 9 (which are separated geographically by 800 kilometers, and temporally by more than 300,000 years), although the Dmanisi sample also increases the variation within H. erectus considerably. The Chinese and Javan samples show a level of variation in cranial measures very similar to that seen in modern humans. The different patterns in the African and Asian samples raise the possibility of a change in patterns of dimorphism, and potentially social behavior, in the H. erectus lineage over time and/or across different geographic regions."

So, about 1.5 million years ago, the "erectus" in Africa had a high level of dimorphism, large males, smaller females. Could we be identifying the remains of males and females as belonging to different species? In other words, could these African hominins assigned to two different species belong to a single species with high sexual dimorphism?

The gracile bones assigned to Homo habilis and Homo rudolfiensis roughly 1.3 m tall (4.3 ft.) and weighing around 35 kg (70 lbs) could have been the females and the larger H. ergaster measuring 1.8 m (6 ft) and weighing 60 kg (130 lbs) could have been the males. Their brain sizes were very similar, smaller than that of genuine erectus:

Bolhuis, 2014 includes the following image; notice how the ergaster brain size clusters close to Homo habilis/Homo rudolfensis:

Brain sizes of different hominins. Bolhuis, 2014

Did this Homo ergaster - rudolfiensis - habilis survive in some parts of Africa to evolve into the Homo naledi? A branch that survived in South Africa for over one million years, living as recently as 300 ky ago.

The stone tools

Acheulean hand axes are the typical stone tool industry of Homo erectus, however the ergasters of Africa were not so clear cut. Semaw et al., 2020 wrote a research paper with the suggestive title "Co-occurrence of Acheulian and Oldowan artifacts with Homo erectus cranial fossils from Gona, Afar, Ethiopia" where African "erectus" (i.e. Homo ergaster") made more primitive Oldowan tools. Their comments are shown below. But notice how the mistake genuine erectus that back migrated into Africa, from Busidima, with the smaller, gracile African "ergasters" from Dana Aoule North. They mistakenly attribute the differences to dimorphism:

"We report that both Acheulian and Oldowan artifacts and Homo erectus crania were found in close association at 1.26 million years (Ma) ago at Busidima North (BSN12), and ca. 1.6 to 1.5 Ma ago at Dana Aoule North (DAN5) archaeological sites at Gona, Afar, Ethiopia. The BSN12 partial cranium is robust and large, while the DAN5 cranium is smaller and more gracile, suggesting that H. erectus was probably a sexually dimorphic species. The evidence from Gona shows behavioral diversity and flexibility with a lengthy and concurrent use of both stone technologies by H. erectus, confounding a simple “single species/single technology” view of early Homo"

The smaller ergasters used the more primitive Oldowan tool kit. They were not erectus.

The Asian erectus that migrated back into Africa, evolved there as reported by Asfaw et al., 2002 who studied a 1 million year old skull known as Daka: "A hominid calvaria and postcranial remains recently recovered from the Dakanihylo Member of the Bouri Formation, Middle Awash, Ethiopia... These ∼1.0-million-year (Myr)-old Pleistocene sediments contain abundant early Acheulean stone tools... Here we report that the ‘Daka’ calvaria's metric and morphological attributes centre it firmly within H. erectus. Daka's resemblance to Asian counterparts indicates that the early African and Eurasian fossil hominids represent demes of a widespread palaeospecies. Daka's anatomical intermediacy between earlier and later African fossils provides evidence of evolutionary change. Its temporal and geographic position indicates that African H. erectus was the ancestor of Homo sapiens." So the Daka person is more evolved than the older ergasters, and is the ancestor of modern humans.

Pearson, 2021 noted the differences between ergaster and the Asian erectus; they took a sample of specimens (a hypodigm), and usied Computed Tomography to analyze the brain case, such as the middle cranial fossa (MCF), which hints at the development of the temporal lobe, which is linked to memory, language and social skills and cognition:

"A total sample (n = 51) of cranial Computed Tomography scans (CT) from extant H. sapiens and fossil specimens attributed to African Homo ergaster and Javanese H. erectus were generated into three-dimensional (3D) virtual models with three linear metrics digitally measured on the MCF and two metrics to approximate cranial size...
relative MCF proportions showed extant H. sapiens had a larger MCF to relative to cranial size, while specimens attributed to Javanese H. erectus which had a relatively longer and wider MCF compared to African H. ergaster. These findings indicate that despite sampling limitations, the fossil sample did not show differences in allometric scaling compared to extant H. sapiens, but these specimens attributed to Javanese H. erectus and African H. ergaster share the same total cranial size but had different MCF proportions relative to cranial size. The paleoneurological implications are that these specimens attributed to Javanese H. erectus had longer and wider temporal lobes relative to total brain size compared to African H. ergaster suggesting different patterns of cerebrocranial organization within the Homo erectus hypodigm."

The Asian erectus were therefore smarter than the ergaster lineage.

Regarding the African fossils themselves, Tattersall, 2007 cautiously points out that they are many differences between the specimens, highlight is mine: "However, while this separation at the species level of the African and Indonesian hominids is certainly justified, the species H. ergaster as thus constituted still embraces a bewildering morphological variety. Indeed, although this grouping of African fossils seems to form a fairly coherent clade, it also appears quite diverse."

Conclusion

The ergaster line is more primitive than the Asian erectus, it has smaller molars and premolars, a less specialized skull. Add this to the difference in cognition, tool kits (Oldowan vs. Acheulean) and the timelines, and you can only conclude that they are different species and not a single pan-African-Eurasian group.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo Floresiensis (Flores Island Hobbit) was more primitive than we believed

The Flores Island hominin, known as the hobbit (Homo floresiensis) was originally believed to have mastered fire, but new research published in Science on July 3, 2026 (E. Grace Veatch et al., Taphonomic analysis at Liang Bua reveals the behavioral and technological capabilities of Homo floresiensis. Sci. Adv. 12, eaeb7219(2026). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.aeb7219) suggest that they were much more primitive.

The paper's abstract indicates that "Since its discovery, Homo floresiensis—an extinct, short-statured, and small-brained hominin species from Flores, Indonesia—has often been ascribed unexpectedly advanced behaviors, such as hunting large game and using fire. Here, we report... that Komodo dragons likely had primary access to these remains leaving behind only low-utility elements for H. floresiensis to scavenge. Moreover, no signs of intentional use of fire are present in the stratigraphic units associated with H. floresiensis. Together, these results suggest that H. floresiensis was not as behaviorally advanced as originally suggested and provides critical insights into the behavioral repertoire of H. floresiensis, raising important questions about its ancestry."

The authors point out that the traces of fire usage in the sites where hobbits were found are more recent, and ocurred after these hominins became extinct. Fire was made by modern humans:

"The controlled use of fire and coordinated hunting of large game are considered critical milestones in hominin evolution ... The fact that H. floresiensis was originally described as having these behavioral adaptations continues to be a source of intense debate. However, with no evidence of in situ burning in the Stegodon or murine assemblage sampled thus far from H. floresiensis–bearing sediments at Liang Bua, it is reasonable to conclude that past fire use at the site was the sole result of H. sapiens behavior that occurred from ~46 ka until present day, well after H. floresiensis and Stegodon disappeared from the area."

This isn't surprising, the paper notes that although fire has been used for about 1 million years (My), it was only used widely over the past 400,000 years. Since the H. floresiensis reached Flores earlier than 1 My ago, they probably never mastered the art of fire making.

The researchers report that they were not hunters either, only scavengers. Since they couldn't cook meat, and ate it raw, they did not benefit from a better use of animal protein derived from cooking. The authors attribute this limited "behavioral repertoire as ... possibly due to an ancestry in which large game hunting and controlled use of fire did not evolve." This suggests that they evolved from a primitive, or more archaic branch of hominins and not from Homo erectus.

Comments

As mentioned in a previous post (about Stringer's remarks about the Out of Africa origin of humans), the origin of the hobbits is a mystery. It could be possible that they originated from an early lineage of hominins like those that led to Dmanisi - Homo georgicus, predating the Homo erectus line. They could even be the original basal line that originated in Eurasia, and in Europe, led to the hobbits proposed by Ludovic Slimak as living in France over 400 ky ago (see my previous post about Slimak).

Ancient hominins like these would have developed primitive stone technologies (Stringer calls them "prehuman"), and they may have not learned to use fire. They were probably the first hominins (were they even members of the homo clade?) who left Africa (or probably evene originated in Western Eurasia). They could be the ancestors of the Dmanisi people in the Caucasus (H. georgicus), and the erectines, and migrated into Africa to originate the hominins there.

In my next post we will look into the hominins that are said to have preceded Homo erectus inside Africa, and discuss Homo habilis, H. ergaster, H. rudolfensis.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Hobbit hominins in Europe? Ludovic Slimak and his current research

An article published in the Spanish daily El País in its Science section, (read it here, in English) on Feb 16, 2026, was an interview of the French archaeologist and paleoanthropologist Ludovic Slimak (b. 1973). In the final part of the interview, Slimak mentions an amazing discovery: the possible existence of pigmy hominins that predate the last Ice Age, in France; creatures similar to the Flores Island hobbits (Homo floresiensis).

This is the full text that final part (highlighted text is mine):

"Q. Do you have any new discoveries?
A. Yes. I can’t give out any details because we’re going to publish it in a scientific journal, maybe in two or three years. And I’ll write my next book about this, which will be called something like The People of the Forest. It’s possible that other, completely unknown human populations existed. We’ve found a body in a deep cave. In a layer of soil that predates glaciation. It’s fascinating because the morphology is very specific. It looks like a seven-year-old child, but it’s the body of an adult. From what we’ve seen, there are no Neanderthal features. And we don’t know what it is. It could be a population like the one in Hobbit of Flores, isolated in a very dense forest, as they were at that time. There may be several more bodies. We have work ahead for years. I can’t say more."

Censured and Redacted

The European Hobbit is also mentioned in an article published in Human Evolution News titled Hobbit Neanderthals? Top French Scientist may have revealed a new species of Diminutive Hominin in Europe? (April 27, 2026). It echoes the same theme, mentioning the interview published in El País and adds a suggestive remark: the interview was edited and something was deleted from it: "... according to the channel Highly Compelling, the original version of the interview contained something far more explosive — and it was quietly removed."

Highly Compelling is a video feed on Youtube, and this is the link to the video mentioned above.

The removed part is evident, as can be seen in the current version of the El País' article, that ends as follows (after he mentions the name of the book —People of the Forest:

"...We are working on layers dating back over 100,000 years, corresponding to an Europe covered by vast primary forests. It is a fascinating and still largely unknown phase. We know very little about how human populations lived in those dense, closed landscapes. Our image of Neanderthals is too heavily shaped by the cold and the glaciations, but before the ice, there was forest. These could be populations that developed very specific lifestyles in those environments. We are only just beginning to understand it. We have years of work ahead of us."

The paragraph is very vague and completely different from the original text! No reference to unknown dwarf-like people, only some comments about how different people could have lived in Europe before glaciations, when it was covered by forests, and non-Neanderthal "populations" adapted to that environment.

The following image, shows the original, and the current text, that was redacted.

The video suggests that the search for the hobbit has already begun: The renewed excavations at the Orgnac 3 site in southeastern France implies that they are working on this find. The site's lower levels are around 375,000 to 400,000 years old. Previous digging there in the 1970s described remains of "neanderthal, mostly from juveniles, and lacking clear Neanderthal features" juveniles seem to imply small body size (like a seven-year-old), and the lack of Neanderthal features agree with the comment in El País. The video suggests that they could be Homo habilis or Naledi. They are small and ancient creatures. It hints that pygmy proportions could provide an evolutionary advantage such as less demand for resources, easier mobility in thick forests, quicker reproduction rate. They would compete in a different niche with other hominins and avoid conflict. The change in climate conditions during the glacial periods probably marked their demise. The video also says that the original 1960s excavations found modern-looking teeth that, however, were around 400,000 years old, a "warmer" interglacial period during which the are was forested.

Bahain et al., 2022 provide a good summary about the Ognac-3 site. Another paper by Moncel et al., 2012 about the site mentions the "... several hominin teeth attributed to Pre-Neanderthals" found there. Both are paywalled.

Slimak et al., 2024 describe the teeth (see p. 100 "Hominid Remains") unearthed at the site: "Seven hominid teeth were discovered from Levels 5a, 5b, and 6. An adult upper right canine was discovered in 1962, and two deciduous incisors and 4 deciduous molars were discovered between 1968 and 1971. M.A. de Lumley (de Lumley 1976) reports that two of the deciduous molars come from a juvenile around 9 years old, whereas two incisors come from a juvenile around 5 years old.... Based on these comparisons, M.-A. de Lumley attributed the hominid remains from Orgnac 3 to ‘pre-neanderthal’ (de Lumley 1976). No information is given about the two remaining molars, and no photographs or drawings of any of the specimens have ever been provided, except a photograph of one of the deciduous molars in situ during excavation in 1968 (fig. S3; Combier 1968, 1971)." Are the teeth attributed to the children actually teeth of dwarfish hominins? Does pre-neanderthal imply a primitive variant of hominin?

Closing Comments

Speculating wildly, we can imagine different scenarios to account for these tiny hominins.

First we must consider if Homo habilis was a homo or an australopith (see this post), and the H. naledi probably never left Africa, and maybe isn't even a member of our homo lineage (see this post). This could discard both species as the source of European pygmy hominins.

An interesting alternative could be that the homo group originated in Eurasia instead of Africa (see this post) evolving into the Dmanisi - H. georgicus people in the Caucasus region, and Homo erectus (who have been in Eurasia for around 2 million years).

This ancient Eurasian ancestor, the first of the homo lineage, could be the ancestor of the Flores Island hobbit (H. floresiensis), who, as mentioned in my previous post, Chris Stringer suggests, is "...a relic of an earlier stage of human evolution that got all the way over there" (in Indonesia) before Homo erectus reached that region.

Could those who lived in Western Eurasia be the tiny-bodied hominins mentioned by Slimak?

We will have to wait a couple of years for the paper promised by Slimak to learn more.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Chris Stringer on reviewing the Out of Africa theory

This will be a very short post about a relevant subject: how the Out of Africa theory has been upset by the discoveries that have taken place over the past twenty years. I came across a podcast by Chris Stringer RETHINKING "OUT OF AFRICA", and I encourage you to read it.

Christopher B. Stringer (born 1947), is a British anthropologist who has always backed the Out of Africa (OOA) theory (as the source of modern humans). However, the genetic evidence of admixture between Neanderthals, Denisovans, archaics and even super archaics with humans has led him to reconsider his position. Stringer has come to admit that we are a complex mix of different hominins. He now supports a modified version of the OOA theory that contemplates interbreeding.

In the podcast, Stringer describes the original concept on which the OOA theory was built: a single, isolated group in Africa, evolved into modern humans, and spread across the globe replacing all other hominins without mixing with them. He recognizes that it was very simplistic. The presence of Neanderthal DNA in Eurasians, Oceanians and Amerindians hints at a first contact in Southwest Asia and not a gradual intermingling as modern humans trekked into Europe. Furthermore, the presence of Denisovan ancestry in Eastern and Southern Asia and Oceanians also shows that humans also met these mysterious hominins and intermingled with them.

Below are some quotes from this work with my comments.

On Neanderthal Introgression; how, when, and where

Stringer points out a remarkable fact: the uniformity of Neanderthal introgression in Eurasians. If we had met them in Europe, the Europeans would have more Neanderthal DNA than other groups, after all, Neanderthals lived in Europe, but the situation is different. Stringer says: "The extraordinary thing is the level of DNA is about the same in a modern European, a modern Chinese and a modern New Guinean. One possibility is that an interbreeding event happened early on in southwest Asia. As modern humans first emerged from Africa, they met some Neanderthals —maybe only 25 Neanderthals and 1,000 modern humans. That would be enough. And then that DNA gets carried with those modern humans as they spread out from that area and diversify."

This is the first time I have seen the admixture event quantified. It is rather small-scale, isn't it? But it sounds realistic. The location in SW Asia (the Levant) is also reasonable.

On Archaic admixture inside Africa

Just as in Eurasia, ancient hominins survived in Africa until recently and admixed with African humans. This is something that I have posted about several times : "...some African people have acquired [DNA], perhaps even from Homo heidelbergensis... In Africa itself, archaic humans could have lingered in parts of the continent as well. From some recent genetic analyses, there is evidence of an input of archaic DNA into some modern African populations as recently as 35,000 years ago. So even in Africa, the process was more complicated than we thought."

Regarding this point, I notice that it seems to be a taboo-like subject in academic circles. Do scholars consider it discriminatory to suggest archaics or super archaics had sex with modern humans in Africa? Why can we say this about Eurasians and Oceanians, exchanging body fluids with Denisovans and Neantherthals, but not about Africans? It is just pure wokeness.

On the Flores Island "Hobbit" the Homo floresiensis

This hominin is remarkable, it survived until very recently (17,000 years ago), it has a large brain in relation to its size, it crossed a deep sea barrier to reach Flores Island and thrived in its island ecosystem. Where did they come from? Are they Homo erectus that shrunk in size to survive on the island? Are they the outcome of an even earlier hominin? Stringer ponders:

"... The suggestion is now that this [hominin] might represent an even earlier stage of human evolution, one that's closer to Homo habilis or even to Australopithecus, creatures that lived two million years ago or more in Africa. Although we've got no evidence of it happening yet, the argument is that one of those more primitive forms got out of Africa more than two million years ago, somehow found its way over to southeast Asia, and survived in isolation on the island of Flores until 17,000 years ago, when it went extinct. That would be an even more extraordinary story than a Homo erectus getting there and dwarfing, that you've actually got a relic of an earlier stage of human evolution that got all the way over there."

Unsolved questions

Stringer also mentions that "We've got a whole unknown history" for the Flores Island hominins and also for the Denisovans. More on this subject in my next posts.

He suggests that the Homo erectus probably evolved in Europe, resulting in the Homo antecessor, in Spain. That the Homo heidelbergensis evolved into Neanderthals in Europe, and also into Denisovans and modern humans (Though he does not say where the H. heidelbergensis originated!).

He hints that H. heidelbergensis who also lived in Africa, survived there until recently, possibly admixing there with modern Africans: "Africa had an overlap of modern and archaic humans, with the possibility in a continent so large that there were other descendants of heidelbergensis living there alongside Homo sapiens. These populations could have exchanged DNA too, evidence of which might be found in the genomes of living Africans."

Stringer concludes (highlight is mine): "We end up with quite a complex story, with even some of this ancient DNA coming back into modern humans within Africa. So our evolutionary story is mostly, but not absolutely, a Recent African Origin."

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo antecessor is possibly the common ancestor of Neanderthals and Modern Humans

A research paper published a few days ago, on August 3, 2026, has looked into the the microstructure of the skull of Homo antecessor,a hominin that lived in what is now Spain, 800,000 to 900,000 years ago.

The article, Parietal thickness and Homo antecessor: A description of three new fragments from Gran Dolina, Atapuerca, Spain🔒, by Gallareto-Sande, Bruner, Saladié, and Martinó,n-Torres focuses on the similarities of the bone structure of H. antecessor and Neanderthals, and H. sapiens.

The authors note that although it had initially been "proposed as the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans based on a combination of derived facial features and primitive postcranial and dental traits" later studies suggested it was a branch or "stem" within our clade.

According to Phys.org the paper found that the the "total cranial vault thickness of these adult individuals falls within the range observed in modern humans and Neanderthals and is clearly lower than that found in Homo erectus and other early Pleistocene hominins."

The sample used bones from four adult individuals which were analyzed using computer microtomography. This allowed the researchers to study each layer of the bone structure. Though they caution that the sample is small, the layer knwon as diplo%ë on the inner side of the bone is very similar, in its thickness to that of humans and Neanderthals. Howver, the outer and inner layers show differences between antecessor and Neanderthals and humans, they are slightly thinner and thicker, respectively, than theirs. Even so, they are very unlike those of the other hominins like Homo erectus and the African species.

The paper does not say so, but it makes me wonder if this European hominin evolved there, in situ, from older erectus populations, and is, in fact, the Last Common Ancestors of Modern Humans and the Neanderthal-Denisovan lineages. See my post about this possibility, and also this post, and this post.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo erectus in Australia (Forbidden subject)

Back in the 1970s, in the days before the Out of Africa theory, a multi-regional evolution of humans was widely embraced. The analysis of fossil skulls from Australia suggested they had evolved from Homo erectus. Later, in the 1980s, woke winds blew across Australia. New policies were enacted by the Australian government, who handed over to the Aboriginal people the remains that had been discovered in the preceeding decades. They were buried. Data, photographs, and sites were restricted. Archaeology in Australia ground to a halt.

Let's look into some unique human specimens, those found in Australia.

In 1972, Thorne and Macumber published an article titled Discoveries of Late Pleistocene Man at Kow Swamp, Australia in the prestigious journal Nature (vol. 238, pp. 316–319), stating that "The late Pleistocene human remains from Kow Swamp display archaic cranial features which suggest the survival of Homo erectus in Australia until as recently as 10,000 years ago." And, nobody was upset or surprised by that proposal.

Kow Swamp skulls were heavily built ("robust"). Thorne had unearthed the remains of 22 people in Kow Swamp between 1968 and 1972. The site was chosen because, in 1925, a partial skull had been found there, known as Cohuna cranium (pictured further down). The site was dated to around 13,000 years ago. Below is an image of the Kow Swamp 5 specimen.

The following image from Durband, 2009, is captioned ""Robust" Pleistocene Australian crania. From top to bottom: Cohuna, Kow Swamp 5 and WLH 50. All crania are casts. Note the flatter foreheads, larger brow ridges, and more heavily built features on these specimens." The first two are from Kow Swamp, WLH 50 is from another site (more on it further down)

The thick brow ridges and flat foreheads give these skulls a primitive appearance. But, some scholars did not agree with Thorne, arguing that the shape was due to artificial deformation.

However, Kow Swamp skull 1, pictured below does not present signals of being artificially deformed, yet it has a robust appearance and heavy brow ridges.

We can't re-examine them now because the local Aboriginals reburied them for good in 1990, effectively removing them from the spotlight of science.

WLH 50 (Willandra Lakes Human) are the remains found in 1980 on the surface of an arid region close to the Willandra Lakes. The skull is large (1540 cm³), as large as a modern human, and with a strong resemblance to the skull of the Ngandong Homo erectus. It is approximately 26,000 years old, and prompted Hawks et al., 2000 to link it to the erectus specimen: "...the Ngandong hominids of Indonesia... are classified as Homo erectus... [our studies] indicate that the Ngandong hominids or a population like them may have contributed significantly to the ancestry of WLH-50.."

The erectus Ngandong specimens were alive until quite recently (see my 2019 post), roughly 100 kya, in Indonesia.

Wolpoff, a champion of multiregionalism, published an article in Science, 2001 which included the following image: (original caption reads: "Figure 1 Ngandong 1 (left) compared with WLH-50 (center, cast) and Qafzeh 9 (right, cast), shown in lateral view to the same scale. In its simplest form, the issue we address is which two are alike and which one is different. WLH-50 is the youngest of the three."

The article aimed at disputing the Out Of Africa theory finds that "there is no evidence suggesting that WLH-50 can be grouped with either Late Pleistocene Africans or Levantines to the exclusion of the Ngandong sample" it mentions that Ngandong are considered "archaic humans or late surviving Homo erectus."

I am under the impression that the Aboriginal people of Australia somehow resent the notion of pre-sapiens peopling of the continent-island (see this post). They may have valid reasons for this, such as the past desecration of their sacred sites, the exploitation and neglect that they suffered after Europeans discovered (for the West) and settled Australia. They also oppose to notions that go against their ancient oral traditions which enshrine their Creation myths during the Dreamtime. Conflict with these ancient stories could undermine their position as "original" or "first" people in the continent. So, it is reasonable to imagine that they want to exercise more control over their cultural heritage, past, and present. What is not reasonable is to rebury specimens of our common human past, and attempt to erase them from the body of human knowledge.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Rock Apes: possible Homo erectus sightings during the Vietnam War

In yesterday's post about a strangre sculpture which, according to Richard Thornton, depicts an homo erectus I mentioned his comments about extant Homo erectus in Vietnam, which were encountered by U.S. troops during the war in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and early 1970s. Today's post will look into this claim.

I found an article about hominins (wild men) in that area Research on Wildmen in Vietnam, published in The Relict Hominoid Inquiry 10:6-28 (2021), written by Tran Hong Viêet, Tran Hong Hai, and Jeff Meldrum. Which reports the presence of surviving hominins in the jungles of Central Vietnam. The evidence they present includes the descriptions in local folklore, and tracks and footprints. They identify two varieties, a big one and a small one. The larger creature has feet larger than those of humans but smaller than those attributed to the American bigfoot. It is hairy and roughly 1.8 - 2 m tall (5 ft 11 in – 6 ft 7 in). The paper wonders if they are surviving Gigantopithecus blackii or Homo erectus or even Homo heidelbergensis.

The smaller creature is also hairy, 1.2 - 1.5 m (3 ft 11 in – 4 ft 11 in).

Ciochon R, Long VT, Larick R, González L, Grün R, de Vos J, Yonge C, Taylor L, Yoshida H, Reagan M. in an article titled Dated co-occurrence of Homo erectus and Gigantopithecus from Tham Khuyen Cave, Vietnam. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1996 Apr 2;93(7):3016-20. doi: 10.1073/pnas.93.7.3016. PMID: 8610161; PMCID: PMC39753, report that Gigantopithecus and erectus overlapped in the same ecosystem and time in a cave in Vietnam during the Early and Middle Pleistocene.

Some references to Vietnamese hominins

I found some mentions of "rock apes" and bigfoots in Vietnam, but they are all relatively recent, from the 2020s. For those interested in reading other sources, see the following: Some US troops reportedly saw Bigfoot in Vietnam — No one knows how he felt about communism by Stilwell, 2025; The Mysterious 'Bigfoot' That Horrified Troops In The Vietnam War by Russell, 2024; and Moore, 2024, My uncle and the rock apes of Vietnam, and Rock Apes: How Vietnam’s ‘Rock Apes’ Confounded American GIs by Hemmings, 2019.

Surprisingly all of these articles are relatively recent. Didn't anyone write about them in the '60s or '70s?

Apparently they did, but not in the way you would expect. The rock apes were Vietcong (enemy soldiers) named so because instead of calling them "guerrillas" they were refered to as "gorillas" (a pun!) see this source. However, an American Sergeant named James Austin while describing the wild jungle animals, mentioned "Rock apes that throw rocks at you...."

These bipedal "apes" got their name because they threw stones at the American GIs. They were named Batutut or Người Rừng (forest men) by the Vietcong troops or North Vietnamese Army (NVAs).

An article published in 2025 mentions an incident that took place in 1968, when US Marines were attacked by rock-throwing apes in Da Nang at a place called Monkey Mountain. In 1969, close to the city of Hue, a group of male apes confronted soldiers, who had to fire shots to scare them away. It also has some other anecdotical evidence.

I found an even older reference (Coleman, 1999, see p. 180) that states that in 1974, shortly before the end of the war, a NVA General named Hoang Minh Tha sent a group of ment ot hunt one of these creatures, apparently it included three scientists named Vo Quy and Le Vu Khoi (Hanoi University) and Hoang Xuan Chinh (Hanoi Institute of Archaeology). The general was a real person (born in 1921, died 2008) (source) and the scholars were also mentioned in the Research on Wildmen in Vietnam paper.

As a closing remark, I leave this link to an article written in Vietnamese (thankfully Google translated it for me): In a Place in the Truong Son Mountains by Tran Hoai Thu, 2015, which describes the war, and an expedition by the author to the area where Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia meet, the home of these creatures.

We could imagine that any of the local native monkeys that live in Vietnam could explain the "rock apes" without having to invoke an extant prehistoric hominin. For instance, there are Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus avunculus) and several types of gibbons (Nomascus) in Vietnam.

I also want to point out that the jungles of this region have sheltered large mammals that only recently were discovered by science: the Saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) in 1992 a cow-antelope-like being, the Giant Muntjac (Muntiacus vuquangensis) in 1994, a deer; and the Laotian Rock Rat, a rodent, in 2005 (Laonastes aenigmamus). Therefore, they could also be the hideout of intelligent hominins.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo erectus in the Americas, some things I found on the Internet

I came across some short texts posted by Richard Thornton (his mini bio), in which he discusses a statue protraying an ape-like creature found in Mexico. Thornton suggests that it is the depiction of a captive Homo erectus.

In Homo Erectus in the coastal marshes of Tabasco State, Mexico? (October 25, 2024) he includes some pictures he took in the 1970s, including one that he describes as "...quite controversial after public exposure, since it does not portray a Homo Sapiens with typical Indigenous American features. However, mainstream archaeologists still refuse to admit the possibility that the millions of animals that crossed back and forth across the Bering Land Bridge over the past two million years were followed by primitive hominids."

A second post Homo Erectus in the Americas? (April 15, 2022) includes the following image:

Statue supposedly depicting an Homo erectus. Richard Thornton, 2022.

Thornton wrote: "It looked like a primitive hominid, such as Homo Erectus, not a New World Monkey. He is portrayed standing erect with his hands tied behind his neck. This is the typical way that Mesoamerican art portrays prisoners of war or people captured to be made into slaves. Monkeys were always portrayed with their arms and legs tied together, hanging from poles."

The final post is titled: Did Homo Erectus live in the Americas until fairly recently? (December 6, 2023) and includes this text "There are stories, both in the Lower Southeastern United States and in Southeast Asia of primitive humans with tails, who were capable of hurling rocks and sharpened sticks at Homo Sapiens humans. Those in what is now the United States disappeared soon after the arrival of Europeans. Apparently, they were extremely vulnerable to European diseases. During the Vietnam War, such creatures supposedly attacked both U.S. and Vietnamese soldiers, who ventured into an uninhabited mountain range in what was then South Vietnam."

Some comments

The spider and howler monkeys are common in the southern areas of Mexico. They represented good fortune, happiness, lust, pleasure in the Central American lore. They were sacred animals and were not used for sacrifices nor eaten (source). Below are some Mesoamerican depictions of monkeys (same source), they have a monkey appearance:

Thornton is right in his posts when he says the statue has been moved. It ended up in the Villahermosa museum and is known as "Monument 56", its name is "Monkey Looking at the Sky."

The sculpture although it is shaped as a column is believed to be a peg-like structure which was to be displayed horizontally. It shows a head and a torso of a simian (anthropomorphic) figure with its arms bent backwards, behind the neck. It has a round-shaped eye and a narrow bridged nose. The creature wears a hat or helmet, and the back of the hands have been lost. It has triangular ears. It is 1.36 m long (roughly 4.5 ft.) and 53 cm wide (21") and 48 cm thick (19"). It is made of a tough hornblende andesite.

"It is highly likely that this sculpture was originally embedded horizontally; that is, the section resembling the body is the tenon that secured it as part of a building's architectural structure." (Source, and also source of the following images):

Finally, the comments about Vietnam and sightings there during the war are new to me. I will look into it. The remark about them being vulnerable to European diseases makes sense. Illnesses like measles, human flu, and small pox would affect hominins but not monkeys.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

The shape of the human face helps identify our distant ancestors, and they were Eurasians!

A paper published in Nature by Lacruz, R.S., Stringer, C.B., Kimbel, W.H. et al. in 2019 (The evolutionary history of the human face. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 726–736 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0865-) — which can be read for free here suggests that our ancestry derives from Eurasian hominins, not African ones.

The authors discuss the last common ancestor (LCA) of modern humans and place it in the Mid Pleistocene (MP). They wonder which of the known MP hominins is our ancestor. They use the human face as a standard to define our LCA. The paper, published in an orthodox and renown journal like Nature can't go against the estsablished Out of Africa (OOA) dogma, so it has to somehow acknowledge the African origin of modern humans, but does it in a grudging, reluctant way. The paper states that "...the LCA should predate the appearance of a modern face, which begs the question: what is the earliest evidence of a modern human face? In considering the origins of the human face, we should take into account that mounting genetic and morphological data support the notion that H. sapiens first appeared in Africa. But these same data also imply that, while fully fledged H. sapiens likely had an African beginning, the evolutionary origins of traits that are characteristic of the modern face, represented by the LCA, may be found elsewhere." And elsewhere can only mean outside of Africa, in Eurasia.

After suggesting that Homo heidelbergensis, also found in Africa, as Homo rhodesiensis could be our LCA, the authors raise some questions about this idea (they seem to be too robust), and state that:

"This issue is further complicated by the apparent presence of a more H. sapiens-like midfacial morphology in Chinese fossils from the MP, such as Zhoukoudian, Nanjing (Fig. 3d), Dali and Jinniushan. This morphology is especially apparent in the newly announced (but not yet published scientifically) cranium, said to be from Harbin, North East China. These examples could perhaps be the result of gene flow or an independent evolutionary trajectory convergent on that of H. sapiens, raising the issue of whether these differences are phylogenetically informative. However, an alternative and plausible scenario implicates the morphology of the early European hominin species, Homo antecessor...
... In this scenario, a more ancient and taxonomically distinct LCA for the H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis lineages is based on the ‘modern’ maxillary conformation of the ATD6-69 H. antecessor face from Gran Dolina, Atapuerca, dated at ~850 ka...
The evidence instead suggests that the large and non-H. sapiens-like faces of Bodo and Broken Hill 1 (Fig. 3b,c) represent taxonomic diversity in the African MP record, which could exclude the large fossils assigned to H. heidelbergensis and H. rhodesiensis as representative of an ancestral morph for H. sapiens. Given other shared and more H. sapiens-like facial morphologies, ranging from the late lower Pleistocene of Europe to the MP of China and Africa, it begins to look more parsimonious to interpret a H. antecessor-like facial morphology as primitive for the clade containing H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis. This symplesiomorphic morphology was also present in at least some fossils assigned to Chinese H. erectus, in other archaic Chinese hominins and in the lineage of H. sapiens present in Africa from ~500 Ky, while it was apparently lost in the H. heidelbergensis/H. rhodesiensis and H. neanderthalensis lineages."

This suggestion is relevant, it somehow implies that non-African hominins, from China, and others from Eurasia, including Homo erectus, and also the Homo antecessor fossils from Spain are more human-like than fossils found in Africa older than 500,000 years ago. So, there is plenty of evidence of ancient human-like faces in Eurasia before it appeared in Africa! The authors, tacitly suggest that modern humans did not originate in Africa. They appeared in Eurasia and back-migrated there from Eurasia around 500 kya!

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Archaic Admixture (within Africa) a new paper (Science Jul. 30, 2026)

A paper published in the non-peer reviewed BioRxiv last March (see my post on it) has been now published in Science, on July 30, 2026 (Yulin Zhang et al., Recovering signatures of archaic hominin introgression using ancestral recombination graphs. Science 0,eaef8874 DOI:10.1126/science.aef8874). It discusses ghost introgressions in modern human populations. My original post highlighted its main points. Today, re-reading the article, I found some interesting points, which I discuss below.

Heterozygosity and archaic introgression

All research about Amerindians and all other non-Africans, stresses that they have higher homozygosity than Africans, a signal of a lower diversity in their genes. They are less heterozygous. I have argued in several posts that the higher heterozygosity observed in Africans could come from their recent admixture with archaics that survived until recently, within Africa.

This paper reported that (highlighting is mine) "Several additional lines of evidence support our results of ghost ancestry in modern humans. First, we find that genomic regions harboring ghost ancestry exhibit elevated heterozygosity levels, a pattern also observed for Neanderthal and Denisovan segments (fig. S25). The elevation in heterozygosity is consistent with a model of introgression from a deeply divergent lineage..."

The authors note that sub-Saharan Africans have the highest levels of super-archaic ghost admixture, and non-Africans have much lower values, but they attribute it to a bottleneck effect following the Out Of Africa (OOA) migration, ignoring the possibility of recent admixture within Africa: "We find that ghost ancestry peaks are over-represented in sub-Saharan African populations relative to non-African populations, which is consistent with the lower genetic diversity in non-Africans."

Africans and admixture there, in Africa

Regarding "deserts" where ghost presence is lacking, they attribute it to the same cause, the OOA migration: !We also identify 97 deserts of ghost ancestry (i.e., regions that are at least 10 Mbp long and have less than 0.1% frequency of ghost ancestry). These deserts are only found in non-African populations, with nearly half (43.3%) shared between different non-African groups, likely formed during the OOA bottleneck (supplementary section S6.3 and figs. S37 and S38). We do not identify any ghost ancestry deserts in sub-Saharan Africans." A plausible explanation for this is that ghosts introgressed within Africa, leading to a total lack of deserts there, while in the rest of the world, deserts point at a lack of superarchaic admixing.

In my original post I highlighted their comment about the source of the ghost population, I will once again quote the authors comments: "The ghost lineage, with a divergence time similar to Neanderthals, could plausibly correspond to Middle Pleistocene Homo groups or African Homo heidelbergensis populations that directly admixed with modern human ancestors before the OOA dispersal. For the super-archaic lineage, one potential candidate—compatible with the split time of approximately 1.8 Mya—is Homo erectus, as suggested by earlier studies."

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©