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 © 

Duration of the Out Of Africa Migration, it was much slower than believed

Reading a paper about the peopling of Sundaland by Homo erectus (Husson et al., 2022, Javanese Homo erectus on the move in SE Asia circa 1.8 Ma, I learned something about the time it took these ancient hominins to people this southeastern part of Asia, and it was much longer than I expected.

The authors report that " H. erectus reached Java and dwelled at Sangiran, Java, ca. 1.8 Ma.... The dispersal of H. erectus across Sundaland occurred over at least tens to hundreds kyr."

Migration pathways of H. erectus across Sundaland during Early Pleistocene. (a) Reconstructed landscape ca. 1.8 Ma (model goSPL32). The underlying physiography, with overprinted modeled rivers, converts into a map of resistance to displacement that serves to compute the migration pathways, either using a least-cost path algorithm shown for the Myanmar entry point (purple), or a mechanistic movement model (SiMRiv30) exemplified for the Vietnam entry point (orange). Blue star locates the Thailand entry point.. Husson et al., 2022

The map above shows how different the landscape was around 1.8 million years ago, with an emerged area spanning not only the Indonesian islands but also a land bridge from Vietnam into Sundaland, separating the seas of China and Thailand. It also depicts in orange and purple, possible entry routes from the mainland Asian area to Sanigran in Indonesia.

The time spent walking

The point they studied is how long did the trek of these erectus people take. After all, there are remains in China and also in Georgia, at the Dmanisi site, around 1.9 to 2 million years old, and the Indonesian remains are just 100,000 years younger. Let's see what the authors say (my comments are underlined) and I highlight some relevant parts:

" How long did the journey take? While least-cost paths are 6,000 km long on average from mainland Asia to Java (Fig. 4a), the mean travelled distances are 50 times longer for Markovian walks (327 x 10³km), regardless of the north entry point, and almost always in excess of 100 x 10³ km. The corresponding time span depends on the migration speed. Estimates are available for more recent palaeolithic hominins, ranging from 1 to 10 km/yr [I will comment on this point further down]. At similar speeds, the least-cost paths convert into an optimal travel time of 0.6 to 6 kyr, which is thus the minimal time to cross Sundaland. Markovian walks imply much longer durations before hominins reached Java, between 25-40 kyr at fast moving rates, and 250-400 kyr at slow moving rates (Fig. 4b). These relatively long delays at average or slow moving rates are difficult to reconcile with the early arrival to Java ca. 1.8 Ma, following departure from Georgia or China only a few 100 kyr before. We suggest that because these characteristic travel times scale with the characteristic time scale of changes of the physical environment, external forcings impelled hominins to migrate and boosted their displacement.... We find that H. erectus migrated across Sundaland at remarkably fast rates (>10 km/yr) with respect to their prior journey across Eurasia, and to the displacement rates of other lineages of the genus Homo"

In other words, they estimate that the joureny could take between 25,000 and 400,000 years, to move from northern Thailand or Vietnam to Sanigran in Indonesia. And say that the erectus people walked faster than that because there were external forces pushing them forward (?).

They adopt a quicker pace to fit the timeline of not more than 100,000 years between the oldest Asian specimens in China and Georgia, and those found in Indonesia. So, the authors suggest a slow pace across Asia from Georgia to East Asia, and then a very quick entry into Indonesia.

The paper assumes a speed of 10 km per year for Homo erectus which is the speed at which the fastest "recent palaeolithic hominins" move at (see further up, where it places that speed at 1 to 10 km/y). In my opion, this is quick.

So, just taking straight lines as a course (this would assume the travelers knew in advance where they were going, which they didn't), the distance however from northern Thailand to Java is roughly 3,000 km (2,000 miles). Which they. Taking figure 4b in the paper, at 10 km per year this journey would have required between 7 and 62 ky, on average 32 ky. If these people would have moved at the slower limit found in more recent palaeolithic hominins, they would have required 320 ky to do so (70 to 620 ky).

Interestingly, the modern humans of the Out Of Africa wave are said to have trekked from the Sinai (starting 60 kya) to Beringia in only 40,000 years. That is a much longer distance (10,700 km - 6,700 mi) than the one into Sunda from northern Thailand. So, moving at the pace of the erectus that peopled Sunda, to cover this distance that is 3 times longer, it would have taken almost 100 ky on average. So if they set out 60 kya, they still haven't arrived in America! And walking at the lowere speed limit, it would have taken 1 million years.

Something is wrong in the dispersal speeds.

The paper seems to understand this implication, because it ends with an interesting conclusion: "At a more general scale, our TCN ages obtained for the first appearance datum of H. erectus in Sangiran advocate for an early peopling of Sundaland by H. erectus, contemporary with their Chinese and Georgian counterparts, whose endocranial capacity was much smaller than specimens from Sangiran. These results reignite the long-standing controversy over the origin and dispersal pathways of archaic humans and invites a reexamination of the out-of-Africa paradigm, which provides a global roadmap for the dispersal of the genus Homo, but which one-way direction may be questioned."

Directionality suggests Asia-To-Africa migrations, and the smaller-brain sizes of contemporary erectus in China and Georgia vs. Indonesia requires some explanation. Why would the more advanced erectus be those most distant from Africa, in Sangiran?

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

Homo antecessor the base of the human tree (in Spain)

Today's post will continue exploring the subject of yesterday's post, about the Eurasian origin of Homo sapiens, from a basal population that lived 900 to 700 thousand years ago in Atapuerca, Spain, the Homo antecessor, that originated Neanderthals, Denisovans, and our species, in Europe.

Martinón-Torres et al., 2019 analyzed the teet of the Atapuerca fossils, and concluded that Homo antecessor is the common ancestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans: (highlight is mine) "Overall, the data presented here support the taxonomic validity of Homo antecessor, since this species presents a unique mosaic of traits. Homo antecessor displays several primitive features for the genus Homo as well as some traits exclusively shared with Early and Middle Pleistocene Eurasian hominins. Some of these Eurasian traits were retained by the Middle Pleistocene hominins of Europe, and subsequently became the typical condition of the Neanderthal lineage. Although other skeletal parts present resemblances with Homo sapiens, TD6.2 teeth do not show any synapomorphy with modern humans. In addition, TD6.2 teeth can be well differentiated from those of Asian Homo erectus. The dental evidence is compatible with previous hypothesis about H. antecessor belonging to the basal population from which H. sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis, and Denisovans emerged."

This conclusion was ratified by Welker et al., 2020, who analyzed the proteins found in the teeth of the Atapuerca fossils, and compared them to the ones extracted from the Dmanisi, Georgia hominins (believed to be Homo erectus). See the full article for free here.

Weker's team says its findings "provide evidence that H. antecessor is a close sister lineage to subsequent Middle and Late Pleistocene hominins, including modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans. This placement implies that the modern-like face of H. antecessor —that is, similar to that of modern humans— may have a considerably deep ancestry in the genus Homo, and that the cranial morphology of Neanderthals represents a derived form."

Interestingly, Huguet, et al., 2025 published a paper in Nature about The earliest human face of Western Europe and assigned it to an Homo erectus. It was found in Spain in the Sierra de Atapuerca, at the Sima del Elefante site (TE7 level). This is 1.1 to 1.4 million years old, and predates the later Homo antecessor found in the same region.

The midface bones uncovered at Sima del Elefante "... are primitive for the Homo clade and they do not display the modern-like aspect exhibited by Homo antecessor found at the neighbouring Gran Dolina site... Furthermore, ATE7-1 is more derived in the nasoalveolar region than the Dmanisi and other roughly contemporaneous hominins" These differences between erectus in Spain and Georgia, with the former being less primitive (more derived), shows that erectus were evolving in Western Eurasia but had not yet acquired the modern appearance of the antecessor people.

A surprising fact is that the people living at Atapuerca one million years ago were cannibals according to Carbonell et al., 2010; it wasn't symbolic cannibalism, it had a nutritional purpose: " In conclusion, about 1 million years ago, the hominids of level TD6 added cannibalism to their set of survival strategies as a way of competing with other human groups for available resources. This practice, accepted and included in their social system, is the oldest example of cultural cannibalism known to date."

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

Much Older divergence dates for Denisovans, Humans, and Neanderthals: Implications

I have already posted about this, reporting it last October: The dates for the splits between the different archaic groups has revised in a paper published in Science last September. Research by Xiabo Feng et al., 2025 suggests that a skull unearthed in China known as Yunxian 2 belongs to an Asian group of hominins known as Homo longi, which encompasses the Denisovans (the clade's name is relatively new and was created to formalize the diverse remains from the Middle Pleistocene of East Asia, including Denisovans). It places the split between humans and Denisovans at 1.32 million years ago (Ma) and proposes that Neanderthals split even earlier: 1.38 Ma. The Homo sapiens are much older than previously assumed: 1.02 Ma.

This is the article: Xiaobo Feng et al., The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium elucidates the origin of Homo longi and the Denisovans. Science 389, 1320-1324 (2025). DOI:10.1126/science.ado9202.

Today's post will look into the implications of these earlier dates for our lineage.

A very early split with a different sequence to it

The accepted view is that the ancestor of modern humans and the group leading to Neanderthals and Denisovans split first, and then, Neanderthals and Denisovans separated into two different groups in Eurasia, Neanderthals heading west, into Europe and the Caucasus while Denisovans headed east into Siberia, Tibet, Southern, Southeastern and Eastern Asia. This paper upends that notion. The Neanderthals split first, then humans and Denisovans (called Longi clade in this article) split.

The authors, considering the very old age of Yunxian2 (~1 million years old) push the roots of Human-Neanderthal/Denisovan split further back ("deeper"): "Both the H. sapiens and H. longi clades have deep roots extending beyond the Middle Pleistocene and probably experienced rapid early diversification." The current dates for the Human - Neandersovan split is around 500,000 to 700,000 years ago, this paper suggests it is older: ".The origin of the longi clade can be inferred to be about 1.2 Ma, slightly older than the Yunxian fossils. The origin of the sapiens clade is estimated to be about 1.02 Ma, also close to the age of Yunxian. The divergence between the longi clade and the sapiens clade is at about 1.32 Ma. The monophyletic Neanderthal clade, widely thought to be sister to H. sapiens, diverged from the longi and sapiens clades at about 1.38 Ma in our analysis."

The paper includes the following dated phylogenetic tree (click here for full size image or click on the image below to enlarge it):

Fig. 4. Phylogeny and divergence time of the 57 selected fossil operational taxonomic units from the genus Homo.
The topology of the tree was the majority consensus of the most parsimonious trees from the parsimony analysis in TNT (34). The divergence time was inferred from the Bayesian tip-dating analysis in MrBayes 3.2 (35). Branch lengths are proportional to the division age in thousands of years (Ka). Numbers at the internal nodes are the median ages, and the blue bars indicate the 95% highest posterior density interval of the node ages. The red half-brackets on the right indicate the ranges of the Neanderthal, longi, and sapiens clades. The numbers in red highlight the ages of division of the three clades. Yunxian is also highlighted in red. Xiabo Feng et al., 2025

The shape of the skull is interpreted by this paper as having a "mosaic morphology, which retains plesiomorphies seen in H. erectus/H. ergaster, Kabwe, and Petralona while developing apomorphies shared with H. longi and H. sapiens" Indeed, Homo erectus present in Eurasia since ~2 million years ago is surely linked to the root of the Denisovan (Longi) clade.

Implications

Neanderthal Dispersal

By having Neanderthal split first, 1.38 Ma, we can imagine the pre-longi/sapiens group remaining in Africa and the Neanderthals heading out of Africa into Eurasia. This clade includes the Sima de los Huesos (SH in the phylogenetic tree, above) specimen, which is old, and linked to Neanderthals, and places it as an early split of that clade. Mainstream Neanderthals appear 781 to 600 kya.

Adopting a position embraced by Chinese scholars (and government), they move Neanderthals further away from modern humans, and place Denisovans (H. longi) closer to us; after all, Neanderthals are Western Eurasians, and Longi are East Asian (Chinese!).

See Qiang Ji, 2021 version for Western consumption, and the Chinese version in The Innovation, Qiang Ji et al., 2021 from which the following image was taken, showing the Neanderthals displaced by Longi as our sister clade:

Graphical abstract . Qiang Ji et al., 2021

However Qiang Ji et al., (2021) in their detailed phylogenetic, dated tree (Fig. 4), give later dates than >Xiabo Feng et al., 2025: ~1 Ma for the Neanderthal split, 949 kya for the Denisovan-Human split, and 770 ky for the root of H. sapiens. See below, highlight is mine. Note: OTU = operational taxonomic unit, a name used for genetically similar creatures, analog to a species definition.

" Harbin cranium and H. sapiens shared a common ancestor at ∼949 ka (1,041.41–875.25 ka). The Neanderthal-H. sapiens divergence time in our analysis was ∼1,007 ka (1,114–919 ka). This estimation falls in the range based on mtDNAs for the split between the basal Neanderthal (Sima de los Huesos) and the H. sapiens lineage, but is much older than the estimation based on nuclear DNAs for the splits between the Neanderthal and H. sapiens lineages. However, it is possible that this younger estimated divergence date is an artifact of statistical averaging between “super-archaic” and “recent gene flow” events. The common ancestor of the H. sapiens OTUs included in our analysis is as old as ∼770 ka (922–622 ka), suggesting that the H. sapiens clade has a much deeper origin time than previously estimated. The Eurasian H. sapiens OTUs share a common ancestor ∼416 ka (534–305 ka) old. Outside of Africa, however, the earliest known H. sapiens fossil is only ∼210 ka."

Qiang Ji et al., 2021 suggest that "Sympatric isolation of small populations combined with stochastic long-distance dispersals is the best fitting biogeographical model for interpreting the evolution of the Homo genus...multi-lineages of Homo coexisted in Africa, Europe, and Asia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene. These Homo lineages probably had a strong capability of dispersing for long distances, but remained in relatively small and isolated populations." Sympatric isolation means that even though they shared the same overlapping territory, they evolved separately, not because of physical barriers, but by other ones (genetic, environmental, adaptative, reproductive, specializations), that keep them apart.

What would keep Neanderthals, who during the later period 120-50 kya spanned Western Eurasia from Altai to Portugal, from moving on into America. They could have skirted the Denisovans (who seem to be more adapted to temperate and tropical climates) by living in colder, glacial spots, in Europe and Asia. They could have gone across West-Central Siberia, Northern Siberia and Northeastern Siberia to Bering, and into America. Nobody digs deep enough to find remains 1.3 million years old!. I am not joking, sediments deposit at a rate of 0.10 to 0.12 mm/year (Source) that is 14 times smaller than 1/16th of an inch. Over one million years it represents 120 m of sediment (393 feet). Archaeologists have only scraped the surface (of course, when digging in areas scoured by previous erosion, or by river banks, other elements factor in, recucing sediment buildup.

Neanderthals, well adapted to ice-cold climates, could have easily reached America 1.38 Ma.

Denisovans

The phylo tree built by Xiabo Feng et al., 2025, follows the line set by Qiang Ji. It has older dates, and places the Homo Antecessor at the base of the Denisovan tree, H. antecessor is a Western European specimen, discovered in Atapuerca, Spain. This suggests a very wide territory for Denisovans.

Although their presence has been described in the temperate and tropical parts of Asia, like the Philippines, Sunda, Southern and Southeastern Asia, they also lived in Tibet, and overlapped Neanderthals in Denisova Cave, Altai, Russia, further north, in colder climes, ~200 kya. The Harbin individual, ~146 kya lived in Northeastern China which even nowadays is cold. Xijung Ni et al., 2021, state, regarding the Harbin remains that "the northerly location of the Harbin site also has implications for Middle Pleistocene human adaptive capabilities, since, even in the present interglacial, this region has winter temperatures averaging more than 16°C below zero [3.2°F] The very large size of the Harbin individual (as judged from the size of the cranium) may indicate physical adaptation to such conditions."

This suggests that they too could have moved northeast towards Beringia. Did they reach America 1.32 Ma?

Humans

Homo sapiens is pushed back 700,000 years, from the commonly accepted date of 300 kya to one million years ago. In Africa, alone, isolated from the Denisovans and Neanderthals who left them for Eurasia.

The Gap in the fossil record

The oldest members of the human branches are the Irhoud, the 300 ky old human from Morocco, the Tabun 2 person from Israel, and Florisbad a H. Heidelbergensis from South Africa. But there is a gap of 700,000 years between them and the split date with Denisovans!

Xijung Ni et al., 2021 who proposed an older than the commonly accepted date for the split "(∼416 ka (534–305 ka) old", yet much shorter than the 1 million years proposed by Xiabo Feng et al., 2025, wonder why there is such a gap between the first fossils and the split date. The team favors an African origin for Homo sapiens offers the following explanation:

"There is a large time gap between the hypothetical common ancestor of Eurasian H. sapiens and the actual fossil record, from the Bayesian tip-dating analysis. One plausible hypothesis is that the ancestral population of Eurasian H. sapiens may have diversified in Africa for many millennia before they dispersed into Eurasia. Genetic studies on ancient DNA suggest that the initial genetic exchanges between Neanderthals and H. sapiens occurred between 468 and 219 ka, or between ∼370 and 100 ka, and the introgression may have originated through gene flow from an African source. Interestingly, not only does the estimated time of the introgression event between Neanderthals and H. sapiens roughly overlap our prediction for the age of the common ancestor of Eurasian H. sapiens, but the African origin of the introgression is also consistent with our African ancestral population hypothesis."

Perhaps the fossil record is incomplete because we haven't found the specimens. Humans are intelligent so they were not easy prey or caught in quicksand, they were surely buried. So, unless we dig deep enough in the right places and find burials, we won't find them.

I believe that there was "diversification" within Africa as ancient archaics that indeed lived in Africa (H. naledi) and others admixed with Africans not too long ago, providing them with divergent alleles. But, why imagine an African origin at all?

Middle Eastern Origin of Modern Humans

Below is a possible and probable sequence for the origin of modern humans outside of Africa following the timeline given further up.

The first to enter Eurasia were H. erectus, from the Horn of Africa in Ethiopia, across the Middle East to the Caucasus where we find them in Dmanisi, Georgia. The map below (Map 1) shows the source and the destination, as well as a tentative migration route (red arrow). I deliberately painted their territories in different colors, they would become isolated and mutations would differentiate African from Eurasian erectus.

Map 1. Erectus leaves Africa . A. Whittall ©2026

Then, 1.9 to 1.7 Ma., H. erectus migrated westwards into Europe, and east, along southern Asia into Southeast Asia, Sunda, and China. Their remains have been found in Eurasia. In Africa, they must have also migrated though we have no evidence (poor fossilizing conditions in tropical Africa). Map 2 reflects these migrations and the color changes denote evolving differences between the groups. Ice and mountain ranges guide their migration

Map 2. Erectus migrates across Eurasia and Africa . A. Whittall ©2026

Map 3 shows separate evolution of the H. erectus clades ~1.5 Ma., splitting in smaller groups, losing territory in the north as the Ice Ages progress, living in more isolation, and moving to better regions (arrows). Some groups become extinct. All differentiate and diverge. Asian, European, and Africans remain isolated, perhaps some interchange in Gibraltar between North Africa and Spain. Erectus people move into Northern China. The group in the Middle East will become relevant in the following phase.

Map 3. Erectus diversify, and evolve across Eurasia and Africa . A. Whittall ©2026

In Map 4 the evolved Eurasian ancestors of Denisovans, Neanderthals, and Modern Humans located in the Middle East (yellow-black star) see the Neanderthals move out, north and west into Europe and the Caucasus and replacing the other descendants of erectus there, possibly leading to the Sima de Los Huesos individual. Their territories are colored yellow.

The H. erectus in the Far East have modified their territories, becoming extinct in some sites, and evolving. The African descent of the erectus are still living in small groups, moving around the continent, diversifying, evolving. Color changes imply changes in the populations.

Map 4. Neanderthal dispersal (their territory in yellow). A. Whittall ©2026

Map 5 below shows the split that took place 1.38 Ma, centered in the Middle East (star) with Denisovans heading west along a southern coastal route into Asia, the same followed by erectus over 600 ky before them, and their inroads into erectus territories in Sunda and East Asia. They also crossed Neanderthal regions heading towards Central Asia (Altai) mingling with them. The pink color marks Denisovan areas. Africans continue splitting into isolated groups, some very archaic, exchanging genes occasionally. They are many very divergent groups, some are more archaic than the rest.

Map 5. Denisovan dispersal (their territory in pink). A. Whittall ©2026

The final move is the one involving modern humans (Map 6, below) shows how modern humans spread, 1 million years ago, from the Levant, into Africa, admixing with the until then isolated, separated, divergent, archaics there. Into Europe admixing and replacing Neanderthals, and west into Asia. The orange color marks their initial territory as they advance on Neanderthals (yellows) and Denisovans (pink) admixing along the way.

Map 6. Modern Humans dispersal into Africa and across Eurasia (their initial territory is colored orange). A. Whittall ©2026

This, at least, is my take on the subject. Of course, fossils are needed to validate it, and further (improved) genetic tools and models are necessary too.

A very early appearance of humans, would imply that mutation rates are slower than currently estimated, only 1/3 of the accepted rate (because it would have taken 1 My instead of 0.3 My for our species to evolve. With modern humans around 1 My ago, they could have also moved on, into America at any time over the past million years. The problem is, that nobody is looking for such ancient signs.

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

Neanderthals: they dispersed across Asia in 2000 years

When I look at the long distances covered by our ancestors across the Old World and the Americas, I often wonder how long did it take them to trek across the continents. Today I found a paper that modelled how long it took the Neanderthals to move from Western Europe, in the Caucasus, to Altai.

I was surprised to find that it could have taken around 2,000 years.

The paper by Coco E, and Iovita R (2025) (Agent-based simulations reveal the possibility of multiple rapid northern routes for the second Neanderthal dispersal from Western to Eastern Eurasia. PLoS One 20(6): e0325693. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0325693) used a computer simulation to find out how a group of hunter-gatherers would move from a starting point into new territories without any previous knowledge of what lies ahead. The program places "cost barriers" like deserts, glaciers, wider rivers, that slow down progress and require detours or more effort to cross them. The simulation did not consider sites where Neanderthal remains have been found, yet the routes it traced coincide with many of them!. Below is a map from this paper (Fig. 2) of these paths during different periods. The authors consider that advancing and retreating ice shields during glacial periods pushed the Neanderthals into refugia further south, to warmer climates, and that they pushed north during the warmer periods.

The simulations end at Altai, where we know that Denisovans and Neanderthals mixed.

How long did it take?

The paper states that "it is possible that Neanderthal dispersals would have taken slightly longer than 2000 years. However, the model still suggests dispersal could have occurred relatively quickly. Such a dispersal may have left few vestiges along the route, as Neanderthals would have spent relatively little time in any one location."

The authors find that their arrival to Altai was inevitable, forged by the geographic constraints and landscape: "This suggests that Neanderthal dispersal to the Altai is an inevitable outcome of local movement decisions defined by geography."

Further research would be required, in Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to locate sites and provide additional data. The paper did not model beyond Altai. I wonder what direction would the simulation take into China, or even towards the northeast, into the tip of Asia and across Bering, into America.<7p>

Could these same paths have been used by the H. Georgicus of Dmanisi, Georgia, in the Caucasus, ~2 million years ago, to reach East Asia?

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

Homo erectus reached China 600 ky earlier than previously believed

Continuning with this series of posts on new findings in Asia, a paper published on February 18, 2026 (Hua Tu et al. (2026). The oldest in situ Homo erectus crania in eastern Asia: The Yunxian site dates to ~1.77 Ma. Sci. Adv. 12, eady2270. DOI:10.1126/sciadv.ady2270) reports that three skulls belonging to Homo erectus recovered from Yunxian, China were dated to an age of 1.77 million years. This is roughly 600,000 years older than previous estimates.

This new dating is very relevant because it shows a rapid expansion of these hominids across Asia: The oldest remains of erectus are found in Georgia (the Dmanisi site) and are 1.78 to 1.85 Ma. The remains from Indonesia are younger, for instance those from Sanigran are 1.5 to 1.66 Ma., and the age assigned to Chinese remains is close to 1.3 Ma.

Interestingly, this paper mentions two sites in China older than 2.1 million years: "Further, the earliest archaeological traces, as represented by Xihoudu [~2.4 Ma;] and Shangchen [~2.1 Ma]." This could imply a very early out of Africa migration of austraolpithecines perhaps! (see my post on erectus and australopiths in Dmanisi, Georgia).

Yunxian site is on the Han River, in Central China. The paper concludes that:

"The age for Yunxian also indicates that H. erectus at ~1.77 Ma was much more widespread than just Dmanisi in Georgia, although the latter site, at the top of the Olduvai subchron (1.78 to 1.85 Ma), should be slightly older. This supports a rapid dispersal model of H. erectus through Asia beginning after 2 Ma. As the dates for these hominin sites continue to be pushed back in time, it would suggest that the chronological gap between the earliest archaeology at sites like Xihoudu [~2.43 Ma] and Shangchen [~2.1 Ma] and hominin paleontology in China is quickly narrowing. Questions remain, however, as to when and where H. erectus initially appeared and could they have been among the earliest occupants at some of these sites in China and elsewhere that now date to the early Early Pleistocene. If not, then should we be considering alternative hominins as the possible earliest occupants of Asia, particularly because the earliest sites in Asia now predate the traditionally accepted appearance of Homo ergaster/H. erectus (~1.9 Ma). The dates for Yunxian presented here represent a step forward to addressing such questions."

An earlier presence of Homo or australopithecines in East Asia opens the door to a continued migration into America 1.7 to 2.1 million years ago.

The two older sites ~2 Ma

The two sites mentioned further up, over two million years old are linked to the following sources:

G. J. Shen, Y. R. Wang, H. Tu, H. W. Tong, Z. K. Wu, K. Kuman, D. Fink, D. E. Granger, Isochron 26Al/10Be burial dating of Xihoudu: Evidence for the earliest human settlement in northern China. Anthropologie 124, 102790 (2020).
Z. Zhu, R. Dennell, W. Huang, Y. Wu, S. Qiu, S. Yang, Z. Rao, Y. Hou, J. Xie, J. Han, T. Ouyang, Hominin occupation of the Chinese Loess Plateau since about 2.1 million years ago. Nature 559, 608–612 (2018).

I will look into them in a future post, and also, look int the possible origin of the homo group in Asia, instead of Africa.

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

Australopiths and Homo may have coexisted in Dmanisi 1.8 My ago

The Dmanisi site in Georgia, in the Caucasus region has produced many fossil remains whose exact position in our ancestral tree is still being debated. These are the oldest hominin remains discovered out of Africa, and reveal that our ancestors left Africa as soon as they could.

A paper published on Dec. 3, 2025 (Nery V, Neves W, Valota L, Hubbe M (2025) Testing the taxonomy of Dmanisi hominin fossils through dental crown area. PLoS One 20(12): e0336484. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0336484) studied the teeth of the Dmanisi hominin remains (H. Georgicus), and suggests that more than one species of hominins lived in Dmanisi, Georgia.

After analyzing teeth shapes the authors found that one specimen (D4500-D2600) shows strong affinities with australopiths, while others (D2282-D211 and D2700-D2735) are associated to Homo species. Based on this the paper suggests that "two distinct taxa coexist[ed] at the Dmanisi site, previously proposed to be Homo georgicus and Homo caucasi."

This conclusion has interesting implications regarding the first Out Of Africa migrations which until now have been attributed to our ancient ancestor, Homo erectus. The authors of this paper state the following:

"Although our analyses did not formally test the phylogenetic history of the Pleistocene Georgian hominins, the proposal of more than one species in the Dmanisi fossil assemblage has implications for the dispersal of the genus Homo out of Africa in the beginning of the Pleistocene. It is traditionally accepted that the Homo erectus migration started in Kenya (Turkana) around 1.89 Ma, reached Georgia (Dmanisi) around 1.77 Ma, continued into eastern Eurasia (Yuanmou) around 1.7 Ma, and finally arrived to Indonesia (Sangiran) by ~1.57 Ma. However, the speciation events that led to the evolution of more than one species in Dmanisi requires that lineages were separated for long periods after leaving Africa, and were likely also evolving in response to different selective environments.
...
If the Dmanisi specimens cannot be taxonomically grouped with Homo erectus, it raises the possibility that early Homo evolution had multiple episodes of cladogenesis, where some of them may have started in Africa, and others outside Africa. Of particular interest to this discussion is the high similarity between the D4500-D2600 specimen and australopiths, which suggests either a retention of the ancestral dental proportions of australopiths in Dmanisi, or an evolutionary convergence after the initial differentiation of early Homo. With the evidence available, it is not possible to properly evaluate if Homo georgicus and Homo caucasi evolved from Homo erectus ancestors, or if they evolved from australopith-like ancestors, but alternative scenarios are worth exploring and considering as new early Homo fossils are discovered in Asia."

The paper also mentions evidence of an earlier expansion out of Africa, signalled by more primitive stone technology, the Oldowan, which is older than the Acheulean tool kit of the H. erectus: "Recent discoveries of Oldowan tools and associated cut marks in Jordan and Romania, respectively, predate the arrival of Homo erectus to these regions, offering further support for the presence of earlier hominin species in the north of or even outside of Africa [16,56,57]"

The citations 16, 56, and 57 are the following:

16.Neves W, Senger MH, Valota L, Hubbe M. Revisiting the cranial variability of the Dmanisi hominins. Anthropol Rev. 2024;87(2):113–25.

56.Parenti F, Varejao FG, Scardia G, Okumura M, Araujo A, Ferreira Guedes CC, et al. The Oldowan of Zarqa Valley, Northern Jordan. J Paleolit Archaeol. 2024;7(1):3.

57.Curran SC, Dragusin V, Pobiner B, Pante M, Hellstrom J, Woodhead J, et al. Hominin presence in Eurasia by at least 1.95 million years ago. Nat Commun. 2025;16(1):836. pmid:39833162

Consequences of Australopithecines in Georgia

An earlier presence of archaic Australopith hominins in Eurasia opens the door to the evolution (outside of Africa) of Homo erectus there from an earlier wave who peopled the area. H. erectus probably originated in Eurasia and later moved "into Africa", as well as moving "around Eurasia", possibly following the steps of these Australopithecines (why would they have only trekked to Georgia? They could have even reached East Asia or Sunda, Sahul... and America). If the Australopiths were part of the first migration out of Africa, maybe 2 Million years ago, it opens up many new, unexpected options for the peopling of the world, and the origin of "Homo".

My previous posts on Dmanisi and H. Georgicus:

The First Asians were not H. erectus

Homo habilis left Africa 2.4 million years ago

H. erectus in Georgia 1.8 Ma (Kvemo Orozmani site). Aug. 2025 discovery

Homo georgicus revisited: An ancient peopling of Eurasia

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

H. erectus in Georgia 1.8 Ma (Kvemo Orozmani site). Aug. 2025 discovery

After my recent post on Homo georgicus and the Dmanisi site in Georgia, eastern Europe. I read about other sites in the area, and learned that in the Georgian village of Orozmani, roughly 13 km (8 miles) from Dmainsi, two remarkable discoveries had been made: in 2021 a tooth was found, and in July of 2025, a 1.8-million-year-old jawbone was dug up, it belongs to Homo erectus. (Source.)

Africa, West Eurasia and Dmanisi, Georgia map. A. Whittall © 2025

The map above gives some perspective. The distance, in a straight line, from the closest point of Africa to Dmanisi (Suez Canal), and the site in Dmanisi is 1,600 km, or 1,000 miles. These people moved all the way from the alleged cradle of mankind in Turkana, Kenya, and Olduvai in Tanzania, to Sinai to bridge the Red Sea (2,900 km - 1,800 mi.) and then enter an unknown territory to trek another 1,600 km - 1,000 miles north into the Caucasus Region.

Implications

In what is now Georgia (Dmanisi and Kvemo Orozmani) these hominins could have evolved becoming H. erectus. Erectus later moved west deeper into Asia (where we find them in Indonesia and China), and being the top hominins of their era, they also surely back-migrated into Africa, where they evolved into H. heidelbergensis / rhodesiensis, from which our Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestors arose, leaving Africa for a second time. Those remaining in Africa evolved into archaic African sapiens ancestors. Perhaps, at the same time, the Asian erectus in the Far Eastern parts of Asia evolved into the archaic sapiens that the Chinese have been uncovering there.

The Papers on the Orozmani site

There is only one paper on this site and most of the information comes from the media reporting the findings. Apparently an international team of reasearchers from different European countries have been digging here since 2021. That year stone tools and the bones of animals hade been discovered and dated to a similar age to the nearby Dmanisi site (1.77 to 1.84 million years). The tooth has not yet been associated with any hominin. The jawbone from the summer of 2025 seems to belong to a H. erectus. See this media news release.

The only reference I have found (Google Scholar and combing the Internet) is this one:
Bidzinashvili, G., Chagelashvili, R., Coil, R., Kopaliani, G., Martkoplishvili, I., & Vanishvili, N. (2023). Kvemo Orozmani, Georgia: a new Lower Paleolithic archaeological site in the Southern Caucasus. Paper presented at Paleoanthropology Society Meetings, Portland, Oregon, United States.
Its abstract is the given below. Note that this paper dates back to March 2023, and is reporting the first findings, not the jawbone.

"The Southern Caucasus represent one of the hubs for the earliest range expansions of hominins during the Early Pleistocene, as evidenced by the extensive archaeological site at Dmanisi, Georgia. Here, we present findings from a new Lower Paleolithic archaeological site in Georgia: Kvemo Orozmani, which is located approximately twenty kilometers west of Dmanisi. Previous dating and analyses of phytoliths and sedimentology correlated the Kvemo Orozmani and nearby Zemo Orozmani sequences to the Dmanisi stratigraphy, indicating roughly contemporaneous localities (Messager et al., 2011). A recent revisit to the Kvemo Orozmani profile revealed Oldowan-like stone artifacts along with faunal remains. Subsequent excavations began in 2020 and have produced more lithic artifacts, faunal remains from numerous carnivores and ungulates, and a hominin tooth. The latter find doubles the number of hominin-bearing Early Pleistocene localities in the Southern Caucasus and offers potential insights into the hominin populations who expanded into this region. Here, we present our initial findings on site formation, archaeology, taphonomy, and paleontology and how this site fits into the greater context of the earliest hominin expansions into Eurasia."

Interestingly it mentions "Oldowan-like stone artifacts" which are pre-Homo erectus, the erectus people developed the Acheulean lithic techology, Oldowan is associated with H. habilis, though a recent study published this year suggest that another group of hominins, the Paranthropus boisei, could have used Oldowan techniques around 2.8 million years ago.

Another online link in Research Gate is the following (Kvemo Orozmani, Georgia: a new Lower Paleolithic archaeological site in the Southern Caucasus): A pdf with images, maps and little text. It has the same title, but seems like a presentation of the paper, not the paper itself. It includes the tooth, coprolites, and the tools. The following map is from this pdf.

Kvemo Orozmani and Dmanisi, Georgia map. From Bidzinashvili, G. et al. 2023.

It also includes images of their stone tools, which look very primitive, almost geofacts. Clearly Oldowan and not the Acehulean tools of H. erectus. As mentioned further up, Oldowan means primitive hominins, like H. habilis, Paranthroupus and also, some australopithecus. The image below is from the same 2023 paper.

Now we will have to wait for the publication on this 2025 jaw discovery and for the identification of the hominin that provided the tooth.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

On why modern humans succeeded in their Final Out of Africa migration

A paper published in Nature (Hallett, E.Y., Leonardi, M., Cerasoni, J.N. et al. Major expansion in the human niche preceded out of Africa dispersal. Nature 644, 115–121 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09154-0) on June 18, 2025, explains why the final Out Of Africa event, 50,000 years ago, was the successful one.

The premise of the paper is that human beings in Africa adapted to living in different environments within the continent (deserts, savannas, grasslands, and jungles) expanding their niche. They could face the weather, and survive in different habitats. It was this flexibility, not tools or special genes that allowed them to expand and move out of Africa. In the authors words:

"The expansion of the human niche beginning around 70 ka in Africa is driven by a gradual increase in human preference for forest and desert biomes, allowing them to expand into regions that were previously rarely populated: (1) forests of West Africa, (2) forests of Central Africa and, eventually, (3) arid Saharan regions and semi-arid Sahelian regions of North Africa. This increased ability to adapt to new habitats, ranging from the extremes of equatorial forests to arid deserts, would have allowed these populations of humans the ecological flexibility to tackle a range of new environmental conditions encountered during the expansion out of Africa, allowing them to succeed where earlier migrations out of Africa had previously faltered. The expansion of the human niche in Africa starting around 70 ka, therefore, offers an explanation for the successful worldwide expansion of human populations about 50 ka"

The previous Out of Africa migrants that survived

I disagree with this point of view.

It is clear that a first wave of Homo sapiens didn't survive. They left Africa 100 ky ago.

But, we have the Denisovan and Neanderthals thriving for hundreds of thousands of years in freezing Eurasia, from Tibet to Spain. In a climate that never existed in Africa (glacial ice and extremely low temperatures). Yet, they were extremely well adapted to their niche, with tools, social structures, and flexibility to hunt and survive.

They had been preceded by the Homo erectus, and probably Homo habilis by at least 1 million years in their migration into Eurasia. And H. erectus lived there, and prospered for hundreds of thousands of years adapting to tropical climes in Indonesia and freezing winters in Northern China.

Luck and Chance

Perhaps the demise of these other groups was not dictated by modern human "flexibility" adapting to African ecological niches, which gave them tools to survive. We were lucky. It was just chance and good fortune that allowed small groups of hominins to survive the deadly environment (drought, wild beasts, volcanic eruptions, disease, infections, lack of food, etc.)

Human Beings almost became extinct 900 ky ago

See these articles published in Sept. 2023: "Did our ancestors nearly die out?" (Nick Ashton, Chris Stringer, Science 381,947-948 023).DOI:10.1126/science.adj9484) commenting "Genomic inference of a severe human bottleneck during the Early to Middle Pleistocene transition" (Wangjie Hu et al., Science 381, 979-984 (2023).DOI:10.1126/science.abq7487). Hu et al point out that:

"Results showed that human ancestors went through a severe population bottleneck with about 1280 breeding individuals between around 930,000 and 813,000 years ago. The bottleneck lasted for about 117,000 years and brought human ancestors close to extinction"

Our ancestors were reduced from almost 100,000 individuals to a mere 1,280 individuals some 900,000 years ago, and this went on for 117,000 years. It was touch and go. This dreop in population was caused by climate change with glaciations becoming long-term events, cooling the oceans and provoking drought which in turn affected the animals in Africa, Europe and Asia.

Then, population recovered and a speciation event took place, and the ancestor of modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans appared, around 750 to 550 ky ago.

Ashton and Stringer add that " Europe was probably completely depopulated after a previously unrecognized cold phase about 1,100,000 years ago" (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf4445) this event eliminated the first hominins to people Europe 1.5 Ma, the the Sima del Elefante people, perhaps descended from the Dmanisi hominins from Georgia (1.8 MA). "these extreme conditions led to the depopulation of Europe, perhaps lasting for several successive glacial-interglacial cycles." It was only later (1 Ma - 900 ky) that Europe was repopulated "by Homo antecessor, which may have been a more resilient species with evolutionary or behavioral changes that allowed survival under the increasing intensity of glacial conditions."

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo antecessor and its relationship with Neandethals, Denisovans and Humans

Covid-19 is disrupting the lives across the world with its path of sickness and death spreading globally. But science continues. Today I post about an article published in Nature this week: Welker, F., Ramos-Madrigal, J., Gutenbrunner, P. et al. The dental proteome of Homo antecessor Nature (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2153-8.

The authors studied proteins from the teeth enamel -which degrade slower than DNA. These proteins came from a specimen of Homo antecessor, a hominin that lived in Spain (Atapuerca) 800 kya, and Dmanisi Homo erectus (1.77 My old). They compared them to those of Modern Humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Their abstract highlights the following (quote):

• "H. antecessor is a close sister lineage to subsequent Middle and Late Pleistocene hominins, including modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans."
• "The modern-like face of H. antecessor—that is, similar to that of modern humans—may have a considerably deep ancestry in the genus Homo, and that the cranial morphology of Neanderthals represents a derived form."

The trees built by the authors show that both Dmanisi and Antecessor are part of our tree, but both lie on branches that do not lead to us. We branched from them. More evidence is needed to find these homins who cover the gap between us and them.

Note that the protein from the Dmanisi erectus was too damaged to provide useful information.

Keep safe, wash your hands, wear a mask and practice social distancing.

Written in an Argentina in isolation and lockdown.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

Neandersovans mixed with Superarchaics as they entered Eurasia 700 kya

Six years ago I wrote a post (Denisovans interbred with Homo erectus) based on an article that suggested that Denisovans had admixed with a "ghost" population that had split from the line that links us and Denisovans, around 1 Millioni years ago. In my post I guessed that this ancestor was no other than Homo erectus.

A very recent paper (see full text: Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestors interbred with a distantly related hominin, Alan R. Rogers, Nathan S. Harris and Alan A. Achenbac. Science Advances 20 Feb 2020:Vol. 6, no. 8, eaay5483 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay5483) came to that same conclusion after some interesting genetic analysis.

The Abstract of this paper says:

"... We show here that hundreds of thousands of years earlier, the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred with their own Eurasian predecessors—members of a "superarchaic" population that separated from other humans about 2 million years ago. The superarchaic population was large, with an effective size between 20 and 50 thousand individuals. We confirm previous findings that (i) Denisovans also interbred with superarchaics, (ii) Neanderthals and Denisovans separated early in the middle Pleistocene, (iii) their ancestors endured a bottleneck of population size, and (iv) the Neanderthal population was large at first but then declined in size. We provide qualified support for the view that (v) Neanderthals interbred with the ancestors of modern humans."

The paper looks into the "large-brained hominins" living in Europe, that made Acheulean stone tools some 600,000 year. It calls them Neanderthal ancestors. They come from the "neandersovan" group, from which Neanderthals and Denisovans descend. And which split from our modern human lineage around 750 kya. The neandersovans left Africa and walked into Eurasia, which was not an empty territory. It had already been colonized some 1.85 Million years ago by other hominins, the "superarchaic" population.

Did they mix?

Yes, they did.

The authors consider that "If superarchaics separated from an African population, then this separation must have preceded the arrival of superarchaics in Eurasia. Nonetheless, our 1.8 to 2.2 Ma interval includes the 1.85 Ma date of the earliest Eurasian archaeological remains at Dmanisi. Thus, superarchaics may descend from the earliest human dispersal into Eurasia, as represented by the Dmanisi fossils. On the other hand, some authors prefer a higher mutation rate of 0.5 × 10−9 per year. Under this clock, the lower end of our confidence interval would be 1.6 Ma ago. Thus, our results are also consistent with the view that superarchaics entered Eurasia after the earliest remains at Dmanisi.".

So depending on the mutation rate adopted, they could have mixed with the descendants of the Dmanisi people from Georgia or from a later group. Dmanisi may be Homo habilis or Homo erectus.

The paper proposes that there were "... only three expansions of humans from Africa into Eurasia: an expansion of early Homo at about 1.9 Ma ago, an expansion of neandersovans at about 700 ka ago, and an expansion of modern humans at about 50 ka ago.". This first expansion led to the superarchaic population in Eurasia that mixed with the second wave of "neandersovans" 700 kya.

The scenario painted in the paper is the following: "Our results indicate that neandersovans interbred with superarchaics early in the middle Pleistocene, shortly after expanding into Eurasia. This is the earliest known admixture between hominin populations. Furthermore, the two populations involved were more distantly related than any pair of human populations previously known to interbreed. According to our estimates, neandersovans and superarchaics had been separate for about 1.2 Ma. Later, when superarchaics exchanged genes with Denisovans, the two populations had been separate even longer. By comparison, the Neanderthals and Denisovans who interbred with modern humans had been separate less than 0.7 Ma.".

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

An early Out of Africa 2.48 Million years ago

We have posted on the hominin remains found at Dmanisi in Georgia, and evidence of hominin presence in China 2.1 Million yeras ago (Ma). A recent paper provides some more information on this very early migration of hominins out of Africa 2.48 Ma, long before the first Homo sapiens appeared.

A few months ago we mentioned a new paper reported in the media that pushes the Out of Africa migration by pre-sapiens hominins to 2.4 Ma. We have just found it published: it is the paper by Giancarlo Scardia, Fabio Parenti, Daniel P. Miggins, AxelG erdes, Astolfo G.M. Araujo and Walter A.Neves, (Chronologic constraints on hominin dispersal outside Africa since 2.48?Ma from the Zarqa Valley, Jordan, Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol 219, 1 September 2019, pp 1-19, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.06.007). It tells us that they found evidence of hominin presence in an area that those who would later reach Dmanisi and China had to cross on their trek out of Africa: The Middle East.

They mention the presence of hominins in China some 2.1 Ma, and in North Africa (2.4 Ma), - and we add the Homo georgicus found in Georgia (1.75 Ma) to their list.

They also report that even though the Levant does not have any sites as old as those mentioned above, they found stone tools in the Dawqara Formation sediments in Zarqa Valley, in Jordan that were buried some 300,000 years earlier thant the Chinese tools.

As Jordan lies in the corridor that any out-of-Africa Homo habilis would use to exit Africa, they conclude that these artifacts were made by these hominins.

They found Oldowan tools together with fossils of mammals in the Dawqara Formation. They were not found in a site (a camp site for instance), the tools were transported to where they were found by water and buried by riverine sediments. They dated these sediments to 2.48 Ma.

These Oldowan tools are primitive and predate the later Acheulean tools developed by Homo erectus. So clearly these hominins were Homo habilis.

This puts an early date for the first hominin migration out of Africa and into Eurasia.

The Abstract is the following:

" Recent discoveries constrain the presence of hominins in North Africa since ca. 2.4?Ma and in China since ca. 2.1?Ma, providing a new temporal framework for the earliest migration out of Africa. No Paleolithic sites of such age exist in the Levant, the natural corridor between Africa and Asia. The Dawqara Formation in the Zarqa Valley, Jordan, has been known since the early 1980s because of the presence of artifacts at different stratigraphic levels within its fluvial sediments, consisting of choppers, cores, and flakes.
Although most of the artifacts display signs of transport, they bear unambiguous evidence of manufacture, and document hominin presence in the Zarqa Valley during the deposition of Dawqara Formation. Based on integrated chronology provided by paleomagnetic, 40Ar⁄39Ar, and U-Pb dating methods, our study shows that the Dawqara Formation was deposited between 2.52+⁄-?0.01?Ma and the Matuyama–Olduvai geomagnetic reversal (1.95?Ma). By linear interpolation, the artifact-bearing stratigraphic levels within the Dawqara Formation have ages of ca. 2.48?Ma, 2.24?Ma, 2.16?Ma, 2.06?Ma, and 1.95?Ma, respectively, possibly documenting continuous hominin presence in the Zarqa Valley.
These new ages for the Dawqara assemblage constrain the earliest hominin dispersal out of Africa to the beginning of the Pleistocene, and pre-date by ca. 300 kyr the hominin occupation of Chinese Loess Plateau."

The North African tools are the 1.9-million- and 2.4-million-year-old artifacts and stone tool-cutmarked bones from Ain Boucherit, Algeria., Sahnouni M, et al., Science. 2018 Dec 14;362(6420):1297-1301. doi: 10.1126/science.aau0008. Epub 2018 Nov 29.

Sahnouni suggests that these old Algerian tools (slightly younger thant the Oldowan tools from East Africa - 2.6 Ma) "shows that ancestral hominins inhabited the Mediterranean fringe in northern Africa much earlier than previously thought. The evidence strongly argues for early dispersal of stone tool manufacture and use from East Africa or a possible multiple-origin scenario of stone technology in both East and North Africa.".

However there are even older tools found in Asia, in India to be more specific, that are 2.6 Ma. Were these the first hominins to leave Africa?

Last but not least, these Zarqa Valley "artifacts" have been dug up in a fluvial environment not unlike the setting where the Calico California stone tools were found, yet these American artifacts have been disregarded by orthodox science and labeled as geofacts (not man made, but shaped by natural forces).

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall © 

Ancestors of Neanderthal and Denisovans admixed with H. erectus

The paper published by Alan R. Rogers, Nathan S. Harris and Alan A. Achenbach (Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestors interbred with a distantly-related hominin June 14, 2019 biorxiv.org) finds evidence to support three human migrations out of Africa, the first one took place 1.9 Million years ago. The second wave happened 700,000 years ago and involved the ancestors of the Nenderthals and Denisovans (which they call "neandersovans". The last wave was that of modern humans. The oldest migration into Eurasia resulted in a population which they call "superarchaic".

They add: "..the large effective size of the superarchaic population hints that it comprised at least two deeply-divided subpopulations, of which one mixed with neandersovans and another with Denisovans."

They mention their molecular clock, which provided a date (95% confidence interval) of 1.9 to 2.5 Million years ago for the split between "superarhcaic" and the other trunk of mankind.

And coment that: "The lower end of this interval hardly differs from the 1.85 mya date of the earliest Eurasian archaeological remains at Dmanisi. It is possible that superarchaics separated from an African population 1.9 mya, expanded into Eurasia, and left those remains at Dmanisi. If so, then superarchaics descend from the earliest human dispersal into Eurasia. On the other hand, some authors prefer a higher mutation rate of 0.5 × 10−9 per year. Under this clock, the lower end of our confidence interval would be 1.7 mya. Thus, our results are also consistent with the view that superarchaics entered Eurasia after the earliest remains at Dmanisi."

They also find that the molecular clock calibrations used to calculate a Denisovan - Neanderthal split some 381,000 years ago by M. Meyer, et al., (Nature 531, 504, 2016) are too recent. They calculate the date of the split was almost twice that figure: 731,000 years ago.

This older date is in line with the 750 kya that we mention in our post Neanderthal and Denisovans split around 750 Kya (May 11, 2018), citing a paper by Ryan J. Bohlender and Chad D. Huff.

Although the paper does not name them, it is possible that the unknown super-archaic hominin population was in fact Homo erectus; they appeared around 2 million years ago which coincides with the split date between superarchaics and the other hominins calculated by Rogers et al.

This is in line with something we posted back in Dec. 2013 (Denisovans interbred with Homo Erectus), when we commented on a paper by Prüfer et al., that hinted at interbreeding between Denisovans and H. erectus.

Mendez, F. L., Watkins, J. C., Hammer, M. F., 2012. Global genetic variation at OAS1 provides evidence of archaic admixture in Melanesian populations. Molecular Biology and Evolution 29 (6),1513–1520.) also suggested an ancient admixture event between Denisovans and H. erectus: "These observations present the intriguing possibility that this deeply diverged region of OAS1 may have introgressed into the common ancestor of Denisova and Melanesians via admixture with an unsampled hominin group, such as Homo erectus. In fact, the introgression of a more archaic form into the ancestors of Denisova was also considered by Reich et al. (2010) to explain some archaic morphological features of the Denisova molar."

 

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall ©