Orangutans and humans - are they our closest relative?

Continuing with my series on the evolution of humans (in my previous posts, I discussed the split between chimpanzees & bonobos, and humans), today I will look into the possible links between humans and orangutans.

The orangutan

Orangutan. Source

The orangutans are the great apes that live in Asia (the other great apes are African). Their habitat, encroached by humans has reduced their geographic territory that spanned Southeast Asia and the south of China and now is reduced to some areas of Indonesia, in Sumatra and Borneo.

Orangutans (by the way, their name, in Malay, means orang = "man" and hutan = "forest"; "forest person"), belong to the genus Pongo and comprise three separate species, one living in Borneo (P. pygmaeus) and the other two in Sumatra (P. abelii and P. tapanuliensis).

Nevertheless, we share roughly 97% of our genome with the orangutans. They are believed to have split from the rest of the hominids (that include humans and the African great apes) around 9 to 13 million years ago (Source). With such a distant split time, it is difficult to believe that we may descend from them. The orthodox viewpoint is that we split from a common ancestor of the chimpanzee lineage some 6 million years ago.

The first to propose some kind of ancestry between humans and apes was the French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), in his work Philosophie Zoologique, p.352 he describes the Angola orang (chimpanzee) as "the most highly developed of animals; it is far superior to the orang of the Indies (Simia satyrus L.) —known as the orangutan—yet, in terms of physical structure, both are vastly inferior to man in both bodily and intellectual faculties." So, the chimpanzee was also known as "orang", but clearly the Indonesian ("Indies") variant was the real orangutan.

Charles Lyell (1797-1875) in his Principles of Geology p.575, criticized "Lamarck's theory of the transformation of the orang-outan into the human species" (worth reading). Later, Charles Darwin, applied Lyell's geological ideas to biology and created the theory of evolution by natural selection (published in his famous book, On the origin of species, 1859). Darwin also wrote about the origin of modern humans in his work "The Descent of Man", 1871 see p. 240, where he speculates the birthplace of humans "In each great region of the world the living mammals are closely related to the extinct species of the same region. It is therefore probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee ; and as these two species are now man’s nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere. But it is useless to speculate on this subject; for two or three anthropomorphous apes, one the Dryopithecus of Lartet, nearly as large as a man, and closely allied to Hylobates, existed in Europe during the Miocene age; and since so remote a period the earth has certainly undergone many great revolutions, and there has been ample time for migration on the largest scale" This is often cited by Out-Of-Africa supporters who only mention the first part (African origin from chimps or gorillas), omitting the second part (possible Eurasian origin and migration). He adds, on p. 255 "We may thus ascend to the Lemuridae; and the interval is not very wide from these to the Simiadae. The Simiadae then branched off into two great stems, the New World and Old World monkeys; and from the latter, at a remote period, Man, the wonder and glory of the Universe, proceeded." Indeed, we split from Old World apes, but which? Chimpanzees or orangutans?

We share many traits with Orangutans

There are many similarities that reveal that we are closer to them than to chimpanzees. For instance: roughly 0.8% of our genome is closer to orangutans than to chimpanzee. See: Hobolth, A. et al. Incomplete lineage sorting patterns among human, chimpanzee, and orangutan suggest recent orangutan speciation and widespread selection. Genome Research 21, 349-356 (2011); and Locke, D.P. et al. Comparative and demographic analysis of orangutan genomes. Nature 469, 529-533 (2011).

John Grehan of the Buffalo Museum of Science, NY, USA, and Jeffrey Schwartz of the University of Pittsburg, PA, USA, coauthored a paper (John R. Grehan and Jeffrey H. Schwartz. Evolution of the second orangutan: phylogeny and biogeography of hominid origins. Journal of Biogeography, 2009 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02141.x) putting forward the idea that humans evolved from the orangutans. Schwartz had already championed this cause in his 2005 book The red ape: orangutans and human origins, and Grehan has published about this same idea in 2006 (more below).

In their 2009 article, they argue that morphology shows that humans and orangutans share 28 unique physical traits compared to 2 with chimps and 7 with gorillas. Another 7 features are shared with all three apes, and finally, chimpanzees and gorillas share 11 features, placing them closer together.

Furthermore, the DNA record is patchy with large gaps in the sequences, so it can't be used conclusively to support a common ancestry with chimps.

Another factor that is seldom taken into account, is that there are no fossils linking humans with chimpanzees.

Both authores propose that humans and orangutans shared a common ancestor, in Asia, that originated the organgutans in Southeast Asia, and then migrated west across Asia, to Africa and Europe some 12 million years ago when this region was forested and formed a single ecosystem. Then, the western branch evolved into a group of apes that later became extinct, and, the first Homo individuals.

Since the fossils of apes in Africa are not older than 500,000 years, and there are older fossils in Europe, the orthodox viewpoint is that the apes originated in Africa, migrated to Europe, and from there to Asia (the orangutan ancestors), and then, returned to Africa to generate the African apes and humans. The authors argue that this is too complicated to be true.

The paper also compared Australopiths and orangutans, who share 8 traits in common and with early humans, and 7 traits between themselves.

Grehan wrote, in his earlier work, in 2006 (Mona Lisa smile: The morphological enigma of human and great ape evolution. The Anatomical Record Part B: The New Anatomist. 289B. 139-157. 10.1002/ar.b.20107.) that the similar shape (morphology) of 28 human and orangutan features vs. only eight between humans and chimpanzees "suggests there is very little in morphology to support a unique common ancestor for humans and chimpanzees... The uniquely shared morphology of humans and orangutans raises doubts about the almost universal belief that DNA sequence similarities necessarily demonstrate a closer evolutionary relationship between humans and chimpanzees." Grehan then examines similarities in detail, such as male mustache and beard, concealed female ovulation, long pair-bonding and prolonged mating, tool use, art, and "house" building.

The article includes the following phylogenetic tree:

Original caption: Phylogenetic and taxonomic implications of the human-orangutan relationship for selected fossil and living taxa (after Schwartz, 1986). The oldest fossil records for each genus are in bold. Daggers denote extinct taxa; solid circles, the approximately 40 uniquely shared features for humans and orangutans inherited by all hominid- and orangutan-related lineages; solid squares, primitive retentions of orangutan-like characters in earlyhominids that were later lost in Homo. Hominids (such as Australopithecus, Homo, and Orrorin) represent the sister group of orangutans and their fossil relatives (represented hereby Sivapithecus). These taxa comprise the sister group living thin-enameled great apesalong with potential fossil members such as Morotopithecus (Schwartz, 1983) comprising the family Panidae and various other thin-enameled fossil apes (Dryopithecidae). The lesser apes (Hylobatidae) and Old World monkeys comprise successively more distantly related anthropoid apes. From Grehan, 2006

My last post noted that the PtERV 1 repeat found in all African apes (chimps, gorillas, bonobos), and many Eurasian ones, is completely absent in orangutans and humans. This could imply a common trait in both species that shielded them from this retroviral infection, or even an isolation in Eurasia for both species that preserved them from the infection.

Interestingly, the DNA of orangutans differs from human and chimpanzee DNA, they split around 12 million years ago from the branch leading to us and chimps yet have undergone fewer mutations than the latter species: " the orangutan has evolved much more slowly than chimpanzees and humans. The orangutan genome has fewer large DNA sequence structural rearrangements than its chimpanzee and human counterparts. Large genome structural rearrangements are DNA mutations that result in large genomic segments being duplicated, deleted, inserted or inverted... "In terms of evolution, the orangutan genome is quite special among great apes in that it has been extraordinarily stable over the past 15 million years"" (Source), chimpanzees and humans "lose and gain new genes at twice the rate of orang-utans." (Source). This is indeed odd. Could it be possible that the split date has been calculated wrong? If the split date was more recent, say 6 million years ago, their mutation rate would be the same as that of the other great apes. It would also bring them closer to us.

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

Chimp-Homo split in Eurasia?

Earlier this year, in my March 2nd post, I quoted Mansfield and Vaneechoutte, 2024 who put forward a new hypothesis about the split between Pan (chimpancees), Gorilla, and Homo. Instead of taking place in Africa, they argue that the split happened in Eurasia.

Since one of my recent posts dealt with the Chimpanzee-Human (Homo) spilt, assuming the orthodox view that it took place inside Africa, in today's post we will revisit the possibility of an Eurasian origin for the Homo genus.

Mansfield and Vaneechoutte's paper

In their article, Mansfield and Vaneechoutte elaborate on the lack of fossils inside Africa of a common ancestor for chimps, gorillas, and humans.

Focusing on the very early presence of apes in the Anatolia and the Balkans at 10 to 6 million years ago, they suggest that the closure of Gibraltar that led to the dissecation of the Mediterranean Sea (Messenian Salinity Event), and the very arid period that followed that event, forced the "separate branches of European hominids to migrate out of the Mediterranean region." This migration led the ancestors of gorillas and chimpanzees-bonobos across the dry seabed of the Mediterranean, from Greece, into Africa.

The authors believe that the ancestors of Gorilla and Pan entered Africa from Eurasia in two separate migratory events, and a third lineage, the one leading to Homo, and eventually to us, humans, moved in another direction into the Arabian Peninsula. There, these future Homo survived the hyperarid period that had forced them out of Europe.

Tectonic rifting led to thhe reopening of Gibraltar, and the vast Zanclean Megaflood that took place 5.3 million years ago modified the geography and cut-off potential routes of entry into Africa (like Sinai), by refilling the Mediterranean basin up, in just two years, and flooding the Sinai region and the Red Sea. Isolating the ancestors of Homo in a humid refuge in Arabia, isolated from all other apes.

The Pan lineage, of the chimpanzees and bonobos went deep into Africa and there, it split, with a branch evolving into the Australopithecines and the Paranthropus. These small-brained, small, primitive hominins are more adapted to a life in the trees than in the open savannas.

Homo, evolved, and produced the bigger, stronger, long-legged, brainier Homo erectus. This paper suggests that after the water levels dropped, coastal corridors and routes opened up, and these were used by erectus to walk westwards, into Africa, and east, crossing Eurasia from China and Indonesia, while the northern route through the Levant led to the Caucasus (Dmanisi) and Europe.

This theory was again put forward in a paper by Verhaegen, Munro, Bonne, Mansfield, & Vaneechoutte, 2026 (A hypothesis of ape and human evolution based on comparative biology and plate tectonics. Academia Biology, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.20935/AcadBiol8310) which is worth reading as it explains in detail the species, and gives a very good timeline for all these eventss.

Earlier, Böhme, 2017 had proposed an Eurasian origin of the Homo group and a Eurasian split between the ancestors of chimps and humans: suggesting that "the Pan-Homo split predated the Messinian and that the chimpanzee–human last common ancestor thrived in the Mediterranean region... major Miocene hominid radiations occurred outside Africa and endorse the hypothesis that the hominin clade arose in the Eastern Mediterranean."

However, these ideas are dismissed by mainstream scholars. I believe that the reason for this is that an African origin of Homo is crucial to the Out Of Africa theory.

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

The human hand and Homo genus

In my previous post I discussed the similarity between chimpanzees amd bonobos, who our closest living relatives, and how different they seem to be in comparison to us, despite a relatively recent (6 million year old) split from our Last Common Ancestor (LCA).

While preparing that post I came across an old paper written by Tocheri, Orr, Jacofsky, and Marzke in 2008 (The evolutionary history of the hominin hand since the last common ancestor of Pan and Homo. J Anat. 2008 Apr;212(4):544-62. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7580.2008.00865.x. PMID: 18380869; PMCID: PMC2409097). That paper compares the morphology of the hands of Pan, humans, and our older Homo ancestors (Neanderthals, H. erectus), as well as those of other hominins (H. floresiensis and Autralopiths).

The paper is interesting, and the authors reached some revealing conclusions about hand shape and the possible effects of the development of Acheulean stone tool usage and the shape of human (and Homo) hands.

The authors found a clear division in the hand-shapes of pre-Acheulean and Acheulean hominins. On one side are Australopiths, Paranthropus, other early Homo, and the Homo floresiensis, who share primitive features with the LCA. On the other, are the Neanderthals, Homo erectus, Homo antecessor, and modern humans, whose hands developed "Derived changes" over the past 2.5 million years (Ma) and probably even later (1.5 Ma). These dates coincide with the dates when Acheulean stone knapping technology developed.

This suggests, to Tocheri et al., that the shape of the modern human hand evolved to adapt to stone manipulation.

The authors wonder if "the complete suite of derived characteristics present in the hands of modern humans and Neandertals originated earlier with H. erectus sensu lato or possibly with another closely related hominin species" and affirm that "the evidence reviewed in this paper suggests that currently only three species of the genus Homo (H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, and H. antecessor) display derived hand morphology that is noticeably absent elsewhere in the hominin lineage, including H. floresiensis... this evidence suggests that these features... may have originated sometime between approximately 1.8 and 0.8 Ma, a temporal span that encompasses the origin and initial spread of Acheulian technology (∼1.5–0.2 Ma). This does not imply that the derived features of the radial wrist are necessary to make or use Acheulian tools, only that the current evidence suggests that these features probably originated within a temporal and behavioral context characterized by Acheulian technology."

Despite their cautious comments, there seems to be a distinct line separating Australopiths and Paranthropus, and even the minute Homo floresiensis of Indonesia, from later, more developed Homo humans like Homo erectus, H. antecessor, Neanderthals, and us. I am positive that when Denisovan hands are discovered, they too will be part of this second group.

Primitive, older / earlier hominins, which are not Homo, don't share the Homo shape hand with us.

The H. floresiensis, which is a Homo, has been included in the "primitive" group. The Flores Island Hobbit has been considered by some authors (see Argue, 2017) to be "a long-surviving relict of an early (>1.75 Ma) hominin lineage and a hitherto unknown migration out of Africa, and not a recent derivative of either H. erectus or H. sapiens" Others, like Kaifu, 2015, based on dental morphology, disagree, and suggest it evolved from early Javanese H. erectus, possibly a case of insular dwarfism.

Study of Arms and Hands - by Leonardo da Vinci.

There is something distinctly unique in human hands, they have allowed us to shape the environment we live in, fashion our tools, clothes, homes, touch, write, create artistic objects. They have evolved in parallel with our brains. Other smart, bright animals (think, orcas, or dolphins) lack the physical attributes necessary to manipulate the world around them. Elephants use their trunks to interact on subtle and manipulative ways with their surroundings, but it is far less delicate than human hands.

This paper seems to find a link between human cognition and hand shape, and the development of Acheulean tools, more sophisticated than the previous cobble type stone tools of the Oldowan stone industry. Later, Neanderthals evolved their Mousterian tools, and humans would advance with other more efficient knapping techniques. But the crucial point was the creation of Acheulean tools, 2 Ma, by the erectus.

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

Evolution, divergence, chimps, bonobos, and humans

I often wonder why are chimpanzees and bonobos so similar to each other, at least on their external appearance, and seem to have evolved very slowly over the past two to three million years. Modern Humans, on the other hand, compared to our 3 million year old ancestors the Australopiths and Homo habilis are very different in our abilities and appearance.

Bonobos (Pan paniscus) are a species of ape that lives in the tropical rainforests of Western Africa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). They are, together with the chimpanzees, the closest living relatives of human beings. The chimps, (Pan troglodytes) have a wider range in both territory and environment, from tropical jungles to savannas. They live in a wide swath across central Africa, from Guinea and Liberia on the Atlantic area of West Africa, through Mali, Sierra Leone, and across th heart of Africa (Habon, Congo, DRC, Cameroon, Ruanda, and Uganda) and into East Africa (Tanzania).

Chimpanzees and bonobos share a comon ancestor. They diverged into two distinct species between 2.5 and 1.5 million years ago. But, they don't seem to be all that different (on the outside).

It seems that, unlike humans, and our ancestors, they didn't admix with each other. The Congo River seems to have been a physical barrier that kept chimps and bonobos apart (Diogo, 2017).

According to Diogo, although bonobos and chimpanzees are different, the differences between them accumulated at a much lower rate than the differences that either species have with modern humans.

We grew apart, with us mutating faster than either of the Pan species: The rate vs. humans is over 2.5 times higher for the common chimpanzee and over 1.6 times higher for the bonobo, vs. their divergences between each other.

Remarkable difference, considering that we are said to share 98.7% of their genome with us (More on this "myth" further down).

Geographic range chimpanzees and bonobos. Adapted from Fig. 1 in Prüfer, 2012

Behavior-wise, bonobos and chimps are different. See Prüfer, 2012 and Wilson, 2021. Bonobos are more intensly sexual (and creative in that field too!), female dominated and less aggressive towards other bands; they retain the playful attitude of infancy even as they age. Chimpanzees are the opposite (aggressive males, hierarchical, competitive).

However, alpha bonobo males have more offspring than lower ranking ones, and even more than chimpanzee alphas, showing that even in matriarchal societies, there can be a polygynic bias.

Chimps use tools: stones to crack nuts, and wood spears to hunt monkeys or dig for roots. Bonobos don't. Chimps can kill their kin, bonobos don't

Based on these behaviors, it seems that modern humans share traits from both ape species.

Human-Chimp & Bonobo split date

I have always believed that the 6 million year (My) date assigned to the split between humans and Pan, is too recent (see this post). A recent study by Oliveira Coelho et al., 2026 (Parting ways: Pan-Homo divergence revisited) acknowledges that over the past decades, the date has been gradually pushed back "from ~ 6 Ma to ~ 8.5 Ma over the past 56 years" This is important because it impacts on the molecular clock, often gauged using this split date (take the genetic difference between Pan and us, and divide it by the time elapsed since we split, and you have the mutation rate. A more distant split implies a lower mutation rate).

However, fossils are not there! There is a gap in the fossil record spanning the period ~7 to 9 My ago.

Let's see what future research finds.

Similarity between Humans and Pan

A study by Yoo et al., 2024 (Complete sequencing of ape genomes) is quite clear that we are not 99% similar to them (highlight is mine): "The oft-quoted statistic of ~99% sequence identity between chimpanzee and human holds for most of the genome when considering single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) (Fig. 2b). However, comparisons of T2T genomes suggest a much more nuanced estimate. Examining the distribution of 1 Mbp aligned windows shows that the tail of that distribution is much longer with 12.5–27.3% of the genome failing to align or inconsistent with a simple 1-to-1 alignment, especially within centromeres, telomeres, acrocentric regions, and SDs." Structure and content don't seem to line up in the comparison leaving only a 87.5 to 72.7% similarity.

This is quite a spread, from 99% down to 72.7% is a big difference.

Interestingly, regarding the X to A ratio (mentioned in my previous post), Yoo et al., reported an extremely low value: "for the human–chimpanzee–bonobo ancestor (Ne=76,700, X-to-A ratio of 0.42)."

Are we descended from a common ancestor of chimps and bonobos? Or not at all?

We should bear in mind that when we compare humans with the Pan, we are looking at contemporary species, alive now. But we may be far more different from the last common ancestor (LCA) of both humans and chimpanzees-bonobos (Wilson). This LCA could be radically different from Pan and Homo.

The LCA also had a more Pan-like appearance than human. Sekhavati et al., 2025 analyzed the shape of human, hominin, and Pan feet, and found that it "supports the hypothesis of a Pan-like last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees." Furthermore, the first purported ancestors of our human lineage "the Paranthropus and the Australopithecus africanus + Australopithecus sediba clades evolved arboreal characteristics, suggesting adaptations for arboreality." This is relevant as they are probably not our ancestors after all (more below).

In fact, the earliest human ancestors after the split, members of the Homo group, are probably misclassified as such; I am refering to the Homo habilis. Fortin, 2025 argues that they were added to the Homo group because Leakey argued that even though they had minute brains (only 600 cm³) they walked on two feet and made stone tools. Now, some scholars are having second thoughts. Habilis seems to be more similar to Australopiths than to Homo (see my post: Was Homo habilis a member of our Homo genus?) Even Homo rudolfensis should probably be removed from the Homo group.

In this regard Vaneechoutte et al., 2024 (see my post about his paper: Australopithecines are not our ancestors at all (says study)) wrote: "Instead of considering [Australopith] graciles as ancestral to Pan and robusts as ancestral to Gorilla, as suggested by Kleindienst et al., Verhaegen considered the eastern African australopithecines, such as A. afarensis (incl. Lucy) as well as P. boisei to be ancestral or closer to the genus Gorilla, and the South-African australopithecines, A. africanus (incl. the Taung child) and P. robustus, ancestral or closer to the genus Pan." Vaneechoutee argues that an Ardipithecus-like ancestor evolved into Australopiths, and these evolved into A. africanus and Paranthropus robustus, leading to Pan, and the A. afarensis and P. boisei leading to Gorilla. Humans did not split from Pan, instead they did so from the Adripithecus via an "unknown missing link" adding that "Australopithecines Are Possibly Not Hominins Because Our Ancestors May Not Have Been Present in Africa in between 4 and 3 Ma."

It is possible that Eurasian apes evolved into our ancestor, Homo erectus in Western Eurasia, and that these are the base of the homo lineage.

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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 © 

Into Africa, a new hint from Homo Naledi

There is a hominin named Homo naledi whose remains have been found in a cave in South Africa, dated to around 300,000 years ago (300 ky). It is very primitive and its small skull size and archaic shape is not shared by modern humans or our ancestors like Homo erectus, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and us, humans. Yet, their age places them in Africa at the time our species is said to have appeared there, 300 ky ago! We are supposed to have co-existed with naledi in South Africa before bursting out on our Out of Africa migration.

Those who have studied naledi argue that it has contributed genes to our species and is much more advanced than its primitive appearance may lead us to think. These scholars argue that naledi created rock art, and that it buried its dead (a recent paper published in Cell on June 24th, 2026, reports that all twenty specimens from the cave are female, so they suggest selective gender burial there, it also mentions a protein found in teeth, which I will discuss further down).

Other scientists are not so conviced, like Chris Stringer, who argues that they are not members of the homo group: "I use human as equivalent to genus Homo, while acknowledging that future phylogenetic or proteomics research may show that things like rudolfensis, habilis, floresiensis, luzonensis and naledi don’t really belong in the genus…"

A post on X, formerly Twitter, by @HighlyCitedX (June 28, 2026) raised the question of how could both modern humans and archaic naledi share the same territory, and provides a thought provoking answer: "John Hawks raised this problem before: How could Naledi co-exist with large brained hominins for a million years? Most likely they were not co-existing because there were no large brained hominins in East Africa until late. https://bbc.com/news/science-environment-39842975."

The BBC link is a 2017 article which includes comments by John Hawks, one of the leading researchers of the Naledi site in Africa, I will quote it at length below:

"The fact that Homo naledi was alive at the same time and in the same region of Africa as early representatives of Homo sapiens gives us an insight into the huge diversity of different human forms in existence during the Pleistocene.
"Here in southern Africa, in this time range, you have the Florisbad skull, which may be an ancestor or close relative of modern humans; you've got the Kabwe skull, which is some kind of archaic human and possibly quite divergent; you've got evidence from modern people's genomes that archaic lineages have been contributing to modern populations and may have existed until quite recently," said Prof Hawks.
"You have this very primitive form of Homo [naledi] that has survived alongside these other species for a million years or more. It is amazing the diversity that we are now seeing that we had missed before."
As to how H. naledi held on to its distinctive characteristics while living cheek-by-jowl with other human species, Prof Hawks said: "It's hard to say it was geographic isolation because there's no boundary - no barrier. It's the same landscape from here to Tanzania; we're in one continuous savannah, woodland-type habitat.
He added that the human-sized teeth probably reflected a diet like that of modern humans. In addition, H. naledi had limb proportions just like ours and there is no apparent reason why it could not have used stone tools.
"It doesn't look like they're in a different ecological niche. That's weird; it's a problem. This is not a situation where we can point to them and say: 'They co-existed because they're using resources differently'," Prof Hawks told BBC News."

Hawks tries to explain the pacific overlap and co-existence as a consequence of exploiting different ecological niches. He also notes that there was a vast savannah from South Africa into Tanzania, all the way to the south of Ethiopia. No geographic barriers, only different niches. I tend to agree with @HighlyCitedX, there was no overlap because there were no humans (or close ancestors) in Africa at that time.

The odd non-homo amino acid in the Naledi teeth

Interestingly, John Hawks reports that an ancient hominin known as Paranthropus robustus, that lived in South Africa 2.3 to 0.9 Million years ago, a member of the australopithecine group, and therefore not a homo, had a variant of an amino acid in its teeth, that was quite unique.

The amino acid in question, forms part of a protein known as COL17A1, that together with enamelin play a critical role in the formation and development of teeth. The COL17A1 variant found among Paranthropus is the original, or ancestral version. Modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans carry a mutation, the later, derived variant. So it shows that we, and our homo relatives are in a different lineage when compared to the Paranthropus. The Homo naledi aligns with the primitive non-homo group because it carries the ancestral variant. Hawks writes: "This confirms earlier work showing that naledi is likely an outgroup to modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans". But, I don't know why, tries to argue that naledi and Paranthropus are not closely related: "Because this is an ancestral variant, shared with other primates, it does not support a close relationship between P. robustus and H. naledi." In fact, all primates sampled (except one lemur species) carry the ancestral variant found in naledi and P. robustus, African apes from which our most distant ancestors came from also carry the archaic variant. But somewhere down the line, when the homo genus appeared, they carried a mutated variant that we share with Denisovans and Neanderthals, but not with the primitive naledi or the non-homo Paranthropus.

Hawks adds two interesting facts about the ancestral variant: "So far there is no reporting on this variant in H. antecessor or H. erectus data. One interesting possibility for Homo naledi is that the species may have contributed genes to modern humans. The ancestral COL17A1 variant has not yet been seen in the genomes of living people, which at least suggests that this part of the genome did not have a naledi origin." (See the study on the CO17A1 in Madupe et al., 2017 who mention that Homo erectus and Homo antecessor were not sampled for this amino acid.

The paper published in Cell by Madupe, Hawks, et al., on June 24, 2026 still supports a homo affiliation for naldedi: "... the archaic COL17A1 P635 variant we observe in 5 H. naledi individuals is derived in Denisovans, Neanderthals, and modern humans, and it has not been covered in H. erectus, from either Dmanisi (Georgia) or China, and Homo antecessor.17,29 Interestingly, though, it has been observed in two P. robustus specimens, namely SK835 and SK14132. Determining which variant is present in this and other informative positions, in other extinct hominin species, such as H. erectus and Australopithecus africanus, will help clarify the phylogenetic position of H. naledi."

I have posted about the possibility that Homo habilis is not a homo (more likely an australopithecine), and related to Homo naledi. Today's post adds more evidence to this possibility.

It is intriguing though, to imagine an evolution of homo genus in Eurasia, with australopiths evolving in Africa, (see my post about this), and a much later entry "into Africa" "Out of Asia" of more advanced hominins 300 kya, modern humans.

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

Was Homo habilis a member of our homo genus?

In several posts I had suggested that it was possible that Homo habilis was the first hominin to leave Africa and reach Eurasia. Following some authors, I wondered if they were related to the Flores Island Hobbits, as posited by Arguea et al., 2017. But, as research advances, new analysis appears and definitions shift, possibly an earlier hominin left Africa for Asia (see my post on Australopiths in Dmanisi Georgia). However, Homo habilis have always intrigued me, as they are the first, and oldest members of our Homo genus, and their name, Habilis, is a Latin word that means "skilfull", the first in our lineage to make stone tools (Oldowan, which look like chopped pebbles or cobbles).

Recently, new research has looked into Homo habilis, trying to understand its place in the hominin tree. This post looks into two new papers published last January, on Homo habilis, and their status in our family tree.

The first one is Tattersall, I. (2026). An identity for the inscrutable Homo habilis. The Anatomical Record, 309(3), 546–549. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.70145, published on Jan. 24, 2026. Tattersall suggests that this hominin was the outcme of Leakey grouping together an assortment of bones and proclaiming they were the first stone tool makers back in 1964. At that time human-like attributes were linked to cognition, and therefore stone tools were an indicator of brainier hominins, hence it was included in the Homo genus, unlike the more primitive Australopithecines. Tattersall says that "This motley assortment is notably varied in morphology, age, and body parts represented, and it gives Homo habilis a suspiciously heterogeneous and long-lived hypodigm (approximately 2.8–1.6 Ma)... Homo habilis emerges as a relatively diminutive early hominin toolmaker that possessed a remarkably archaic upper body skeleton and was presumably a significant interactor in the woodlands and bushlands of what are now Tanzania and Kenya (and maybe of Ethiopia too) during the period centering around 1.8–2.0 Ma. "

Are they Homo?

Tattersall suggests these remains of H. habilis are not actually Homo, as they have much smaller bodies than the erectus, who are genuine Homo, and have longer arms that seem adapted to living among trees, he does not classify them as Australopiths either, he suggests a new placement outside of the Homo branch:

"On the basis of the limited material known, the habilis fossils from Olduvai and Ileret fail to qualify as Homo... That exclusion contrasts starkly with the very morphologically distinct and only slightly younger Turkana materials, such as the skeleton WT 15000 and the cranium ER 3733, that are often assigned to Homo ergaster... Homo erectus africanus.
But does this necessarily mean that the relatively diminutive ER 64060/1 individual, with its postcanine megadonty and elongated arms, should be classified as Australopithecus? Of course not. It just means that it is excluded from Homo, although not necessarily from the larger Homo clade that findings at sites such as Ethiopia's Ledi-Geraru (Villmoare et al., 2015, 2025) suggest may already have been diversifying, in parallel to the australopith one, as early as around 3 Ma"

Small, slender, and adapted to trees...

The second paper written by Grine, F. E., Yang, D., Hammond, A. S., Jungers, W. L., Lague, M. R., Mongle, C. S., Pearson, O. M., Leakey, M. G., & Leakey, L. N. (2026). New partial skeleton of Homo habilis from the upper Burgi Member, Koobi Fora Formation, Ileret, Kenya. The Anatomical Record, 309(3), 485–545. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.70100, published on Jan 13. 2026, is more forgiving (it was also cited by Tattersall). The paper focuses on a thorough analysis of the remains of a specimen known as KNM-ER 64061 from Koobi Fora (2.02–2.06 Ma), a Homo habilis.

This individual was tiny, and had less body mass than the erectus it weighed 30.7–32.7 kg (67.7-72.1 lbs) and 1.6 m tall (5.25 ft), though they try to avoid the issue, the authors recognize adaptations that imply an arboreal lifestyle:

"As a consequence of these various uncertainties and concerns, we are hesitant to infer specific behavioral repertoires for KNM-ER 64061 as an individual or for H. habilis as a species. Thus, features of the OH 7 hand (phalanges with a thicker palmar cortex and proximal and intermediate phalanges with high relative bending strengths) may be related to arboreality in H. habilis, but they may equally represent the condition inherited from a phylogenetic precursor of H. habilis that was more arboreal. Similarly, the relatively long forearm of H. habilis may have enabled a greater degree of arboreal locomotion in this species than in H. erectus, but whether arboreality was indeed practiced by H. habilis must remain a matter of speculation."

H. habilis and H. naledi

Homo habilis predates Homo erectus but both species probably overlapped for 500,000 years in East Africa, which reveals different types of archaic humans living in the same region at the same time. They also probably co-existed with the archaic-looking Homo naledi (Lee R Berger, John Hawks, Paul HGM Dirks, Marina Elliott, Eric M Roberts, 2017) which was dated to the very recent age of ~250 ky in South Africa.

This paper proposes that H. naledi with its mossaic of archaic and some (few) modern features, could be located in the Homo habilis branch of hominins: "Phylogenetic scenarios for H. naledi place its origin either: (1) somewhere among the poorly resolved branches leading to H. habilis, H. rudolfensis, H. floresiensis and Au. sediba (Berger et al., 2015; Dembo et al., 2016); Thackeray, 2015): (2) as a sister to H. erectus and larger-brained Homo including H. sapiens (Dembo et al., 2016); or (3) as a sister to a clade including H. sapiens, H. antecessor, and other archaic humans (Dembo et al., 2016) (Figure 2). Maximum parsimony analysis of a large dataset of cranial and dental traits supports scenario 1, placing H. naledi among the most basal nodes of the Homo phylogeny."

H. naledi, with a brain one-third the size of ours (and said to bury its dead and engage in rock art!!) is a controversial hominin. It seems to have existed between ~2.50 to 0.23 My ago, co-existing with the common ancestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans and H. sapiens, and also with the first humans, overlapping with us in South Africa. A second paper by Hawks et al, also from 2017, described the site where they were found, in South Africa, and includes the following image which I adapted from Fig. 36 in Hawks et al., 2017. A picture is worth more than 1,000 words. As you can see, the H. naledi and H. habilis (and A. sediba) are all very similar and different to the Homo erectus skulls, but the H. Naledi is 300 ky old, while the H. habilis ones are over 1.8 million years (My) old, and A. sediba is roughly 2 My old.

Comparison of skulls ancient hominins. Adapted from Fig. 36 Hawkes et al., 2017

The primitive looking naledi and habilis fossils have shorter and smaller skulls with a slanted face and tend to group together in their appearance. The H. erectus are larger, and have bigger brains and elongated skulls. They are the "real" first homo people. However, if the Dmanisi people were Australopiths, then, we should not underestimate the abilities of those that preceded the homo lineage. Perhaps they too, with crude stone tools could have moved across Eurasia and, reached Sunda, Southeast Asia and Eastern Asia over 2 My ago. Are the tiny trolls, gnomes, and elves of our mythology the memory of Australopiths or Homo habilis encountered by modern humans on their trek across Eurasia and America?

Since 1959, but more recently Plummer et al., 2023, and Mongle et al., 2025 suggest that the East Africa Paranthropus boisei, a sister hominin related to ours, was capable of flaking stones with an Oldowan technology, 2.5 to 3 My ago: "These fossils suggest that P. boisei was capable of tool making and use in some capacity." So, toolmaking is not exclusive to our homo lineage.

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

When did we share our last common ancestor with Chimpanzees?

Many molecular clocks are based on the divergence between human beings and chimpanzees. In my previous post I mentioned the calculation method and how it is used to work out the age of a "most recent common ancestor", based on genetic divergence (mutations), and mutation rates (μ). I pointed out the variability of these μ, today we will look into the age estimations for the most recent common ancestors of humans and chimpanzees, all calculated using genetic molecular clocks, except for the work of Sarich and Wilson back in 1967.

Yes, as expected, there is a wide dispersion of values, from 4.1 to 13 million years!

This is a summary of the different dates provided by studies over the course of the past 59 years, dates given in million years ago (Ma):

• 5 Ma (Sarich and Wilson, 1967). Used immunological data (albumins and antiserums) in apes and humans.
• 2.7 ± 0.6 Ma (Hasegawa M, Kishino H, Yano T., 1985). They used the mtDNA molecular clock to calculate their dates.
• 5 - 7 Ma (Galina V Glazko, Masatoshi Nei, 2003). Different calibration points, phylogenetic trees, and use of multiple genes and nuclear protein.
• <6.3 Ma (Nick Patterson, Daniel J. Richter, Sante Gnerre, Eric S. Lander & David Reich, 2006). They analized 20 M base pairs of DNA.
• 4.1 ± 0.4 Ma. Speciation time, the MRCA is older. (Asger Hobolth, Ole F Christensen, Thomas Mailund, Mikkel H Schierup, 2007). Used a model comparing ape-human autosomal DNA.
• 7 - 8 Ma K.E. Langergraber,K. Prüfer, et al., 2012. This team measured generation times in wild chimpanzees, used human mutation rate per generation and calculated the split date.
• 12.1 Ma (Priya Moorjani, Carlos Eduardo G. Amorim, Peter F. Arndt, and Molly Przeworski, 2016). Employed autosomal data but of CpG transitions and considered variable mutation rates.
• 7.4 Ma (Schrago and Voloch, 2013). Stepwise analyses of genetic and molecular datasets covering anthropoids.
• 13 Ma (11 to 17 Ma) (Venn et al., 2014). Considers the high mutation rate in male chimpanzees, and assumes it has always been so.
• 6.6 Ma (Guy Amster, Guy Sella, 2016). Modified mutation rates using sex-specific life histories (onset of puberty, generation times in both sexes, and how they changed over millions of years)
• 5.5 - 6.3 Ma (DongAhn Yoo, et al., 2025). They only used segments that could be aligned (ape-human DNA is very diverged) in an incomplete lineage sorting (ILS).

I like the ones that consider variable mutation rates (see my previous post), because it seems more realistic.

Chimpanzee. Source

No fossils

The main problem is that there are no fossils of the ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. There are other ape fossils which have been dated, in Africa and Eurasia, but the exact relationship with the common ancestor of chimps and humans is the subject of intense debate in scholarly circles.

Reasons for not finding fossils: it is not easy to work in Africa, with the common civil wars, warlords, corruption, lack of access to potential sites, funding issues, and also excuse that the tropical African environment isn't the best to create fossils (It baffles me how Java man was discovered in a tropical setting in Asia!)

There are over 6000 fossils of hominins and 31 species (Foley and Lahr, 2024) but just a handful of ape fossils. There are some like the Ororrin, the Sahelanthropus and the Ardipithecus that could belong (or not) to the clade leading to chimps and humans. But Foley and Lahr write that "These groups may be entirely different, representing taxa that belong to none of the extant hominine lineages or they may belong to an early form of African ape, which... overlapped geographically with later hominins." Clearly, the situation is complex and unresolved.

Previously I posted about Miocene (a period spanning 23 to 5-3 Ma) apes found in Europe and Western Asia, and the lack of fossils from Africa suggesting an Eurasian origin for them followed by a migration into Africa as climate turned worse in their homeland. There are some African fossils dating back to the Miocene epoch the oldest date back to the early Miocene (16 to 22 Ma), in Kenya and Uganda, too far from the split of Chimps and Humans to be relevant for our post.

Kunimatsu, 2007 reported an ape from the Late Miocene epoch, named Nakalipithecus nakayamai, its remains were unearthed in Kenya and it "could be close to the last common ancestor of the extant African apes and humans." It was the size of female gorillas and orangutans. The authors dated it to 9.8-9.88 Ma.

Also in 2007, Suwa et al., reported another finding, some teeth with a gorilla-like appearane which were assigned to a new species, Chororapithecus abyssinicus from Chorora, Ethiopia. This great ape was dated to 8 Ma. It is possible that it is related to N. nakayamai.

The Sahelanthropus tchadensis, reported by Brunet et al., 2002, and 2005, was named for the Sahel region of Chad lived 7 Ma. Leg bones and a skull were recovered. We don't know if it is an ancestor of chimpancees and humans or just a separate branch like the Gorillas.

Orrorin lived in Kenya some 6 Ma. It was first described as closer to humans, but later studies placed it close to australopithecines. Almecija et al., (2013) place it as "intermediate between Miocene apes and australopiths".

The Ardipithecus ramidus seems to have evolved after humans and chimpancees separated (4.4 Ma). Partial remains have been recovered in the Afar region of Ethiopia, and it seems to have been adapted to living in the trees, and was also bipedal but not very efficient walking on two feet. It was the size of a chimp, and had a brain equivalent to theirs too. They may have split from the ancestor of the hominini tribe that encompasses humans and chimpancees and not be a direct human ancestor.

Much more recent are chimpanzee fossils, the very first! unearthed by McBrearty and Jablonski (2005) in Kenya, Eastern Africa, far from their current distribution in Central and Western Africa. They lived close to a hominin species, but they are relatively close in time to us, around 545-284 ky old.

Eurasian origin

Finally, I must mention Frances A. M. Mansfield and Mario Vaneechoutte (2024) who propose a Eurasian origin for Chimpancees and Gorillas, this is an unorthodox and thought provoking point of view. I highlighted their comments on Chimpancees.

"While the established paradigm of human evolution asserts that the lineages leading to the extant great apes and Homo arose in Africa, the large number of fossil discoveries from Europe in recent decades support arguments for a European origin of the Hominidae (all great apes) and plausibly, also a European common ancestor of the Homininae (African great apes, Australopithecus species, and the genus Homo).
Meanwhile, a lack of consensus remains regarding the phylogenetic placement of australopithecine fossil species in Africa, with substantial evidence indicating that some of them may align more closely to extant African great apes than to Homo. Based on a novel interpretation of existing fossil, genetic, paleogeographic and paleoclimatic evidence, this paper aims to put forward a new hypothesis regarding the separate divergences of Gorilla, Pan, and Homo.
We support existing arguments that the last common ancestor of African great apes and Homo may have lived in Europe in the late Miocene, and we put forward a new hypothesis as to where, when, and why the separate lineages may have started to diverge. Extreme conditions during the Vallesian Crisis (11.6-8.0 Ma) and the Messinian Salinity Crisis (6.0-5.3 Ma) may have forced separate branches of European hominids to migrate out of the Mediterranean region.
We argue that the lineages leading to Gorilla and Pan independently migrated into Africa, while the lineage leading to Homo went in another direction. Thereafter, the Zanclean Megaflood (5.3 Ma) —which caused the Mediterranean to refill very quickly— may have cut off the migration route between Eurasia and Africa at the Sinai Peninsula, isolating a small population (the putative Homo lineage) on the Arabian Peninsula / Red Sea coast during a period of hyperaridity. The other group (Pan lineage) crossed into Africa, where it subsequently diversified into various species of Australopithecus."

The authors note that "Upon reviewing the descriptions of presumed hominin fossils from Africa from the late Miocene to the early Pleistocene (from Sahelanthropus tchadensis, ~7.0 Ma, through H. habilis, ~2.31–1.65 Ma) one finds, contrary to expectation, that many of the earlier species tend to display a number of presumed derived features, while later species often display more presumed primitive features.... Meanwhile, detailed analyses of Australopithecus fossils reveal that, other than features related to bipedalism, they tend to display many characters more similar to great apes than to humans... Finally, most students of paleoanthropology agree that the earliest Homo erectus/H. ergaster fossil specimens bear marked dissimilarities with any presumed Australopithecus ancestor, which makes it difficult to establish any direct transition or relationship between the two groups."

The Retrovirus "PTERV1"

The paper also mentions the strange case of retroviral genes (originating in a virus) that entered the genome of all African primates except Homo (us and our ancestors), this introgressed region known as Pan troglodytes endogenous retrovirus 1 (PTERV1), which is completely absent from the human genome. PtERV-1 is believed to have ocurred 3 to 4 million years ago when the retrovirus infected chimpanzees and gorillas.

The paper states that "This strongly indicates that our ancestors were most probably not even in Africa during the Pliocene (Benveniste and Todaro 1976, Polavarapu et al. 2006), but this is rarely commented upon, and attempts to explain how Homo ancestors may have managed to evade viruses that affected all other extant African apes have proved inconclusive (Kaiser et al. 2007, PerezCaballero et al. 2008). The most parsimonious explanation is that our ancestors were not in Africa during the middle Pliocene and may instead have evolved in “an ecological niche that physically separated them from the source of the infectious PtERV1 virus” (Kaiser et al. 2007b)." They made a good point!

The paper argues the following (a long quote, but worth the while reading it); LCA is the Last Common Ancestor:

"We propose that the species representing the LCA of humans and chimpanzees formed part of a continuous migration of fauna from southern Eurasia to northern Africa during the Messinian, between 5.9–5.3 Ma, via Anatolia and across the northern Sinai region of the Arabian Peninsula. Ultimately, a small group of individuals, ancestral to Homo, may have been cut off and separated from other hominids, ancestral to Pan, when, at 5.33 Ma, the Zanclean flood refilled the Mediterranean and submerged the land bridge between the African and Arabian plates, at which point the connection between the two continents was lost. This date would be consistent with the majority of genetic analyses for the timing of the Pan/Homo divergence. The lineage that made it to the African continent—eventually leading to the Pan lineage—may have migrated south along the African Red Sea and/or Nile River valley and continued southward at Afar, following the many substantial waterways and lakes along the East African Rift Valley and Coastal Forest. This may explain why existing fossil evidence fails to demonstrate a clear progression from primitive/ape-like features towards more derived/human-like features, and why there is no obvious progression from quadrupedalism towards bipedalism in the australopithecines...
We suggest that, unlike the ancestors of australopithecines and extant African apes, the proto-human group remained isolated on the Arabian Peninsula. Between 5.6 and 3.3 Ma, the Arabian Peninsula went through a stage of hyperaridity (Böhme 2021), so any species trapped there would have been isolated between the Red Sea and a lifeless desert—an impenetrable barrier... Unfortunately, there is no fossil evidence to support this scenario... Moreover, the Arabian Peninsula presents a location from where a new genus, Homo, could migrate coastally in multiple directions (Africa to the west, Dmanisi, Georgia to the north, Pakistan, China and Indonesia to the east) only once sea levels fell again in the early Pleistocene, thereby giving rise to multiple variations of Homo erectus/ergaster."

Closing Comments

In this post we have mentioned the wide range and variable dates for the last common ancestor shared by human beings and chimpanzees, which is the outcome of the variability of mutation rate values mentioned in my previous post. We also described the lack of fossils in Africa that could help clearly define the transition between Miocene apes and the first homo individuals. Both genetic and archaeological-paleontological finds offer weak backing to the African origin of our ancestors.

I notice, time and time again, an effort to "fit" or "adapt" findings to the accepted timelines and chronologies, and to support the African origin of the great apes. Perhaps Mansfield and Vaneechoutte are on the right track, and their hypothesis explains the early Georgian fossils at Dmanisi.

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