Drimolen Cave in South Africa and the Eurasian Homo erectus

A paper published last week, on Sept. 30th, by archaeologists from La Trobe University, (Martin, J. M., Leece, A. B., Baker, S., Herries, A. I. R., & Strait, D. S. (2026). New hominin cranial and mandibular remains from Drimolen Main Quarry, South Africa. Annals of Human Biology, 53(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/03014460.2026.2725046) described the remains of bones discovered at the Drimolen site. They reached some interesting conclusions.

Drimolen Site

This site is located in a hotspot (there are other similar aged sites nearby —Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, Kromdraai, Coopers), see Google Map. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage site known as "Cradle of Humankind". The place, a quarry, was discovered in 1992, by chance by an amateur archaeologist named André Keyser in 1992. Diggings at the quarry found teeth, jaws, fragments of crania of different hominins, including unidentified Homo species, and Paranthropus robustus. The age of the remains spans a period from 1.5 to 2 million years ago.

The site was an old cave, that was infilled with sediments over the years, and into which animals and hominins fell, and were preserved in the dirt, that became a rock known as breccia (a conglomerate of sharp pebbles cemented together by fine graind sands). This setting, plus the fact that it was a lime quarry, makes me wonder if the old dates assigned to the specimens are accurate. See Herries et al., 2020 who describe the sediments, the now exposed remains of the cave, erosion, quarry alterations, etc. Which tend to downplay disturbed sedimentation, but confirm my suspicions that the site's dating could be skewed to antiquity to favor the OOA theory.

The remains have been described in different papers over the years, and this one is the most recent publication, that describes and identifies the species to which several fossils belong.

The authors identify one of the fossils, named DNH 127, as not belonging to the Paranthropus or the Australopiths. It is assigned to the erectus genus.

It was found in a block of rock that may have been part of a pinnacle (DNH 7) which had been dated (this shows that the dating of the remains is tentative, some fossils were found in situ, in the beds of sediments, others in loose soil. After all, this was a quarry and has disturbed rock beds).

They give it the same age given to the other specimens found in the DNH 7 bed. There was an erectus in the site, DNH 134, so scholars expected to find more. This paper assigns the DNH 127 remains to the Homo erectus group, and date it to ~1.98 million years ago.

Link with Dmanisi

Interestingly, they note that "Heuristically, the morphology preserved by DNH 127 most closely resembles that of D2700 from Dmanisi. Based on this mosaic of traits, we tentatively assign DNH 127 to Homo erectus sensu lato." This is revealing, Dmanisi in Georgia, is in the Caucasus, 9,200 km (5,700 mi) away, and it is the site with the oldest crania of Homo erectus in Eurasia. Their age is slightly younger than the age given to the Drimolen Cave specimen (at 1.8 million years old). But, since it was dated based on a conjectural belonging to a given pinnacle, it may be possible that the date is not precise. If so, the Dmanisi remains could be older, or possibly there are older remains yet to be discovered in Georgia. In this case, we could imagine a migration into Africa, from Eurasia, that reached South Africa 1.98 million years ago. The vanguard of these migrants met and coexisted with Paranthropus in this area.

By the way it is interesting how Herries et al., 2020 stress that the Drimolen erectus is older than Dmanisi. Like they need to reinforce the OOA and African origin of Homo genus: "At ~2.04 Ma ago (minimum age 1.95 Ma), DNH 134 is the most complete and oldest early Pleistocene Homo neurocranium in South Africa. DNH 134 is at least 100,000 to 150,000 years older than H. erectus s.l. specimens from Dmanisi... As such, DNH 134 represents the oldest fossil with affinities to H. erectus in the world. Despite this, we do not assert that the species necessarily evolved first in southern Africa, especially given major geological biases in hominin finds across Africa. However, the dating of the DNH 134 cranium to >1.95 Ma ago substantially weakens the hypothesis that H. erectus sensu lato evolved outside of Africa."

Other unclassified hominins

The paper also mentions that specimens SK 847 and StW 53 have not been classified yet, which "leaves open the possibility that more than one species of Homo may have been present on the landscape in southern Africa ∼2.0 Ma" It states that dental traits have led other authors to assign them to "Homo sp. indet. [but], there is not yet unequivocal evidence to suggest that more than one species of Homo is present within the DMQ assemblage" If so, there would be three or more species there (the other two being erectus and Paranthropus).

A 10 to 1 ratio of Paranthropus to erectus

The unusual ratio of bones between primitive Paranthropus and more evolved Homo erectus.

Although the paper itself does not mention this, it is noted in the University's media release (titled Fossils confirm human ancestors first appearance). In it, one of the coauthors of the paper is quoted as follows regarding Paranthropus and erectus (highlight is mine):

"... “These two human species shared the same landscape and are both preserved in Drimolen cave. While we know that Homo erectus and the lineage leading to us was ultimately the successful one, 2 million years ago P. robustus outnumbered Homo erectus at Drimolen by more than 10 to one. During this time period it was our ancestors that looked like the outside long-odds chance to survive,” Dr Martin said."

This remark drew my attention, why would one species outnumber the other ten to one? It seems that Paranthropus was well adapted to this location, its habitat and environment allowed them to proliferate and grow into a large, well established population. Primitive, the Paranthropus living in this area had larger teeth and jaws, forming a distinct species from other members of the group. This specific adapatation show that they were successful, and the dominant primates in this area.

The fewer erectus remains, however, seems to suggest that they were newcomers. They appear suddenly in the fossil record here, with few members and this hints at recent arrival, a migration of a small population (maybe from the northeast, spreading into a new territory).

The Homo group would be far more successful than Paranthropus but 2 million years ago, they were sharing their new home with very well adapted primates who outnumbered them ten to one.

It is likely that they exploited different resources from their habitat, perhaps the erectus were meat-eaters and gatherers, they made stone tools (though none have been reported here at Drimolen). The Paranthropus were apes, similar to chimps, who may have eaten plants, fruit, and tubers.

The Drimiolen quarry site suggests that erectus was a newcomer to South Africa, it does not prove that they were migrants, and it does not prove that they originated there, in South Africa. Their age, barely older than the oldest Eurasian erectus is used to suggest an African origin for erectus. But, it can't disprove an Eurasian origin and migration into Africa.

Further discoveries will clarify the mystery of the origin of 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 © 

OOA Routes: Bab-el-Mandeb (Post 5)

The last of the corridors that could have been used by hominins and modern humans to exit Africa (or to enter that continent from Wester Eurasia), located on the southern tip of the Red Sea at a strait known as Bab-el-Mandeb.

Post 1: Where was the Out of Africa Corridor?
Post 2: OOA Routes: Gibraltar
Post 3: OOA Routes: Strait of Sicily
Post 4: OOA Routes: Sinai
Post 5: OOA Routes: Bab-el-Mandeb

Bab-el-Mandeb, the southern route across the Red Sea

These straits formed when the continental crust rifted 30 to 25 million years ago, breaking up Africa from Arabia (in Asia) and creating a gap that was flooded, creating the Red Sea.

The southwestern tip of Arabia, located in Yemen (a conflictive and war-torn region nowadays) is located on the eastern side of the strait, while Eritrea and Djibouti are located on the Horn of Africa side of the strait. Southeast, in the Indian Ocean, is the Gulf of Aden.

Close to the Asian coast is Perim Island (just 2.5 km - 1.6 mi. away), then there is a main channel 21 km - 13 mi wide.

To the south, there is a small group of islands, Sawabi Islands, the "Seven brothers", very close to the African coast. From high ground, you can see across the Strait.

Map of Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. Copyright © 2026 by Austin Whittall

For those who support the Out Of Africa theory, this is an ideal corridor, located close the the main fossil sites of Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia, along the Rift Valley. Humans didn't have to go far to reach the sea and cross it into Asia, to colonize it.

The Crossing

Unlike the dry route through Sinai, this one requires crossing deep water. Rafts, or watercraft were necessary, like they would have been needed to cross Gibraltar or the Tunisian-Sicilian straits.

Flemming, 2003 discusses the corridors out of Africa, and points out that the contemporary continental shelf located 20 to 30 m (60-90 ft.) below modern sea levels does not cross the strait. It would have required a sea crossing to bridge the 5 km wide gap (3.1 miles) caused by the deep cut linking the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea during Glacial Maximum periods. This was a gash with a depth of around 140 to 170 m (460-560 ft.)

López, et al., 2016 discussing the Out of Africa event mention this option as the "Southern Route" across the Red Sea, offering some arguments in favor of its use. Similar arguments are used in another paper by Oppenheimer, 2012, who suggests that, of all the potential routes leading out of Africa, this one was the most favorable for modern humans. The reason is based on genetics.

Oppenheimer points out that mtDNA haplogroup L3, expanded out of Africa around 60 to 70,000 years ago, branching into haplogroups M and N shortly after. These two are found in Eastern and Southern Asia (a region which has the highest amount of variant M and N lineages in the whole world). The Levant and Europe have N variants that are younger than those found in East and South Asia, they also have less diversity. This suggests that humans carrying L3 crossed Bab-el-Mandeb and first moved across southern Arabia (Yemen, Oman), the Persian Gulf, and dispersed east into Southern and Eastern Asia, diverging into M and N on the way. Only later did the N haplogroup head into Western Eurasia.

Further evidence is archaeological, which indicates an early peopling of the Philippines and Papua-Australia earlier than the peopling of Europe.

There is evidence of Homo erectus tools at the Saffaqah site in Saudi Arabia, some 350 km (200 mi) west of Riyadh (see Google map), the site is roughly equidistant from Bab-el-Mandeb and Sinai, so erectus, if originating in Africa, could have used either, or both. Or maybe originated in Asia, and used neither.

Saffaqah Acheulean tools are not that old. They were dated to around 200,000 years ago. They are well described by Shipton, 2018, and correspond to a very humid period in the now extremely arid Saudi deserts. At that time several rivers (Wadi) flowed into both Red Sea and Persian Gulf, creating migration routes and providing water (and prey living along them) for hominins.

An earlier, but northern site is the one located at Ti’s al Ghadah in Saudi Arabia, 300,000 to 500,000 years old. Stone tools and bones with cut marks were found at this site, which at that time was set in a more humid savannah-grassland environment (Roberts, 2018). The authors point out that "The identification of Afrotropical, Saharo-Arabian and Palaearctic fauna in association with hominin presence also highlights the possibility of middle, and perhaps also early, Pleistocene hominin migrations into the Arabian Peninsula from Africa and Eurasia" indicating that Arabia was a two-way corridor, blending pot of Africa and Asia.

Groucutt et al., 2018 describe the oldest modern human fossils outside of the Levant and Africa. They were found at Al Wusta, Saudi Arabia, (approx. location in Google Maps) and are 95,000 to 85,000 years old (older than the generally accepted date for the OOA event). Again, this is closer to Sinai than to Bab-el-Mandeb. The authors point out that "Al Wusta shows that early dispersals were more spatially and temporally extensive than previously thought. Early H. sapiens dispersals out of Africa were not limited to winter rainfall-fed Levantine Mediterranean woodlands immediately adjacent to Africa, but extended deep into the semi-arid grasslands of Arabia, facilitated by periods of enhanced monsoonal rainfall" Indeed, the Arabian Peninsula played a role in the hominin exchange between Eurasia and Africa.

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

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

OOA Routes: Sinai (Post 4)

This is the third post in my series on the possible routes taken by hominins in their Out Of Africa (OOA), or into Africa in back migrations over the course of the past 2 million years.

Post 1: Where was the Out of Africa Corridor?
Post 2: OOA Routes: Gibraltar
Post 3: OOA Routes: Strait of Sicily
Post 4: OOA Routes: Sinai
Post 5: OOA Routes: Bab-el-Mandeb

Sinai, the northern route across the Red Sea

Africa is really a vast peninsula of Eurasia, linked by a narrow strip of land that runs between the northern tip of the Gulf of Suez and the Mediterranean Sea. This stretch of desert is roughly 120 km long (76 miles). Since 1869, the Suez Canal runs across this isthmus.

On the eastern side of the isthmus lies in Asia, and is known as Sinai Peninsula, with an area of 62,000 km² (24,000 sq.mi.), jutting into the Red Sea, which surrounds it with two narrow and long gulfs, the Gulf of Suez to the west, and the Gulf of Aqaba to the east. The land connection with the rest of Asia runs along the Egyptian border with Israel.

This area marked by the confluence of different tectonic plates that are splitting the crust of the earth. The rift started to form around 28 million years ago and is still widening by 0.25 to 0.5 mm (1/100 to 1/50 inch) per year. The eastern side is also being uplifted. (Fernández-Blanco, 2025).

Africa lies to the west of the isthums. This region is part of Egypt, and the fan shaped Nile Delta (named for the Greek letter "d" = δ) is adjacent to the Asian-African border.

The delta is a fertile, humid haven in the middle of a vast arid region. The River Nile, flows into the Mediterranean here along two main branches (Rosetta and Damietta), at one time the delta had several addutuibak brabcges and they fanned out further west and east than the present delta. However, the tectonic movement of the Sinai Plate uplifted the eastern edge, causing the easternmost river channel, the Pelusiac River, to silt up, and dry out around 2800 years ago (Stanley, 2008). You can see the site of the former city of Pelusium in Google maps located 21 km, 13 mi. east of the Suez Canal (See Sneh, 1973).

This corridor is the only dry, solid ground, route out of Africa. It did not require crossing any seas, navigating or island-hopping. It was used by animals moving to and fro the Levant. The only complication is that the Sinai is an arid, rugged territory with no permanent rivers or lakes. Rainfall is scarce (120 to 200 mm - 5 to 8 inches per year). This lack of water and desertic conditions are an obstacle. But, it wasn't always like it is now.

The Green & Wet periods

I will follow Breeze, 2016 who has identified several humid periods over the past 250 thousand years that could have favored the migration of human beings across this parched territory and allowed them to cross from the Nile delta to the valley of the Jordan River, and from there, into Western Eurasia. These periods are the following:

• MIS 7. 243 to 191 ka (thousand years) ago. A humid period in NE Africa, Arabia, and the Middle East. The Nile carried plenty of water. Which "raises the possibility of dispersals out of Africa."
• MIS 6. 191 to 130 ka. Continued humidity and from 180 to 170 ka, wet climate in NE Africa and the Levant. Sea levels were lower, allowing for alternate, shorter routes that are now submerged. From 178 to 152 ka, the areas of Jerusalem Dead Sea, all the way to the north of Levant were humid and much wetter, and cooler than nowadays.
• MIS 5e and transition from MIS 6 to 5e (137 to 114 ka). There was a well watered route along the current Nefud desert along the Tabuk Corridor (from Levant, across Arabia towards the Persian Gulf).
• MIS 5a (85-71 ka). A revived damp Tabuk-Nafhyd corridor, a greater flow on the Nile and a slightly humid Sahara.

This brief summary shows that there were plenty of windows between 243 to 71 ka for humans to cross the Sinai and surrounding deserts. This also ocurred many times since our homo ancestors appeared.

The different geography of those days also involved exposed continental shelves along the Mediterranean, a Nile River that flowed further east (Pelusic Branch or similar paleo-branches). Higher rainfall would have formed, along the coastal areas, rivers and streams running into the sea. Breeze notes that this route was used by the hippopotamus "to disperse from Africa to the Levant at the end of the last glacial."

Over the past ten thousand years, as the Egyptian and other cultures appeared in the region, the Sinai ecosystem was altered by human activity. Trees were felled, plant coverage was lost, the topsoil washed away, this led to fewer plants, less rain, and a vicious circle of desertification.

Neanderthals and Erectus in the Levant

Before modern humans, what is now Israel was the home of Homo erectus, and Neanderthals. Goren-Inbar, 2000 summarizes this as follows: There is evidence of Early Pleistocene populations 1.4 million years ago at ‘Ubeidiya with typical Acheulean erectus tools. A more recent site is Evron Quarry (1 million years).

More recently, and with another cultural setting is the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov (or GBY) site (780 ka) which the authors link to "yet another human movement out of Africa." Interestingly the stone tools from this site are not found in similar aged sites across Eurasia, only later did they appear across the continent.

Fire has been recorded at this site too 790 kya (Goren-Inbar, 2004). But who lit them is not known "The producers of the Acheulian material culture have frequently been assumed to be Homo erectus or Homo ergaster; at GBY they may just as well have been archaic Homo sapiens." This closing comment is relevant, because our species, H. sapiens is said to have appared 300 kya. If they are humans, this date is further back than accepted, even older than the split of Neanderthals and Denisovans, and that of humans and the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Homo ergaster is a "sister" species, a variety of African erectus.

The facts are that there are 1.8 million-year-old tools and fossils in Asia of erectus origin (see Yunxian, China), very ancient fossils at Dmanisi, Georgia and even older tools, at Zarqa in Jordania (2.4 My), and Masol, India (2.6 My) probably made by an earlier homo species. This suggests that the movement of hominins out of, and into Africa is ancient, and also, that the obvious route from Africa to Jordania and the Caucasus is through Sinai.

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

OOA Routes: Sicily Strait (Post 3)

This is the third post in my series on the routes that could have been used by ancestral hominins like Homo erectus and also by Homo sapiens to migrate out of Africa (OOA). In today's post we will look into the Strait of Sicily.

Post 1: Where was the Out of Africa Corridor?
Post 2: OOA Routes: Gibraltar
Post 3: OOA Routes: Strait of Sicily
Post 4: OOA Routes: Sinai
Post 5: OOA Routes: Bab-el-Mandeb

Strait of Sicily

Nowadays this corridor is dismissed and not even mentioned as an option for human migration out of, or into Africa (see Oppenheimer, 2012).

The strait separating Tunisia in Africa, from the island of Sicily, Italy, Europe, is a viable route for migration across the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa into the insular region of Italy, and then, crossing the strait of Messina (~3km - 2 mi) from Northern Sicily, accessing the tip of the Italian "boot" on mainland Europe.

The crossing, now used by illegal migrants into the European Union, is some 145 km wide (90 mi.) Too wide to see Sicily from Africa. However, there are some Italian islands in the strait: Pantelleria 77 km - 48 mi. from Africa and 104 km - 65 mi. from Sicily. It is 135 km (84 mi.) from Tunez to Lampedusa, another 44 km (27 mi.) to Linosa, and 122 km - 75 mi. to Malta and Gozo, from there to Sicily it is 85 km - 52 mi.

This is a wide strait, and would require navigation skills to cross it, with current sea levels. However, sea levels were far lower during the Ice Ages of the past 2 million years, and now submerged continental shelf areas were dry land at that time.

A 100 meter drop (330 feet) in the water level of the Mediterranean would have exposed banks that are now submerged, like the Adventure Bank, or Adventure Plateau, on the southern coast of Sicily, that spans 80,000 km² or 30,090 sq. mi. On this bank is shallow area known as Pantelleria Vecchia (Old Pantelleria) which can be seen in th following map, adapted from Galili, 1981. It shows the coast exposed if sea levels dropped 100 meters (black line).

A submerged 12-meter (36 foot) long megalithic monolith ( an obelisk-like stone slab) was discovered on the seabed at Pantelleria Vecchia, it weighs 15 tons, and now lies under 40 meters (120 feet) of water. This shows that neolithic people lived here when it was emerged land. Lodolo and Ben-Avraham, 2023 note that "seawater inundated the inner lands at 9350 ± 200 year B.P., the upper limit which can be reasonably taken for the site abandonment. This discovery provides evidence for a significant Mesolithic human activity in the Sicilian Channel region."

We know (see Scerri, 2025) that late stone age people crossed from Sicily to Malta some 8,500 years ago in simple boats. But, it could have been accessed on foot, as the continental shelf linking Malta to Sicily was dry land during the Last Glacial Maximum (25 kya). Neanderthal teeth were discovered in the Għar Dalam Cave, in Malta by Despott, and reported by Keith, 1918 (more on Keith further down). However, mainstream scholars say they are more recent, and belong to modern humans. The controversy lives on (read more.

Why cross the sea here?

From the coast of Tunisia, you can spot the volcanic summits of Pantelleria on clear days (see this image), which could have enticed ancient explorers to go there. From Pantelleria it is a short crossing to the then emerged Adventure Bank (36 km - 20 mi.)

Opinions against this corridor

Villa, 2001 summarizes the points against this corridor without completely disregarding it, as follows: "In view of the endemic faunas of the Lower and early Middle Pleistocene, the uncertain context of Lower Paleolithica artifacts, the absence of verifed reports of Mousterian industries in Sicily (Mussi, 1992, p. 288), the absence of human remains before the Upper Paleolithic, and the tectonic history of the island and adjacent areas, we must conclude that Sicily is unlikely to have been an important connecting point between Africa and Italy until the Upper Paleolithic." (highlighting is mine).

The French school of archaeologists was more favorable to this corridor. Henriette Alimen (1900-1996) propsed that Acheulean Africans reached Europe through Gibraltar and the Tunisia-Sicily Strait (Alimen, MH (1975). Les "isthmes" hispano-marocain et siculo-tunisien aux temps acheuléens. L'Anthropologie, 79 (3), pp. 399-436.

Rolland, 1992 is also cautious about "The Siculo- Tunisian landbridge" he regards the pebble tools and the matching Pebble-Culture in the Maghreb as unconfirmed, and notes that Italy's mainland was a narrow and complex geography that was subjected to great changes during the Ice Ages. Furthermore, the Mediterranean and the Alps tended to isolate it. The most likely route for entry into Italy, according to Rolland, was from the east, via the Adriatic and Ionian seas' shelves, as attested by Early Paleolithic sites in that region.

Nevertheless, there is evidence of Acheulean tools, 700,000 years old, from Notarchirico in Southern Italy, see Moncel, 2020, (highlight is mine): "the location of Notarchirico in southern Italy suggests two possible paleogeography-dependent routes: (1) following the northern coasts of the Mediterranean Sea from the Levant during low sea levels in glacial phases, or (2) crossing the Sicily channel between Tunisia and Sicily, also during glacial periods with low sea levels.Given the evidence of probable hominin occupation of insular land masses in the Mediterranean during the Lower Paleolithic (Crete, Gavdos, and Naxos), along withrecent discoveries of evidence of settlement on Indonesian and Philippine Islands east of the Wallace line in Southeast Asia as early as 700 ka, the Sicilian route deserves consideration, in spite of the absence of solid evidence of a land bridge."

The following map, from Depraetere, 2025 shows the region as it stood arond 20,000 years ago, with the emerged land, and modern shores (on the lower right side in color, are the shelve regions currently submerged):

Grimaldi Cave, and the Khoisan in Europe!

Keith, mentioned further up, regarding the Maltese Neanderthal teeth, believed that primitive Africans, related to the Bushmen (now known as Khoisan or San) reached Europe via Gibraltar or Sicily, and settled there, while Neanderthals and more modern-looking Cromagnons (anatomically modern humans) were native to Europe. The Grimaldi people were an example of the African branch. They discovered in 1901 by the Prince of Monaco in Mentone, Italy, (see Google map) at the lowest level of the Grimaldi Cave, were "of a race which was neither that of Neanderthal nor that of Cro-Magnon. The skeletons... present traits which have been interpreted as Negroid in character. It will be remembered that the Cro-Magnon race, with its Aurignacian culture, is supposed to have entered Europe from Asia by way of northern Africa and the old land-bridges across to Italy. Now in recent years there are coming to light all over Africa remains of a type of art, consisting mainly of engravings and paintings of animals, which in many ways recall the remarkable cave art of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe. In South Africa works of this character are attributed in part to those dwarfish, yellow-skinned, woolly-haired little hunters, the Bushmen, themselves undoubtedly a very ancient race, now nearly extinct. Moreover, cer- tain of the physical peculiarities of the latter people are shown clearly in the figures of very stout nude women, carved from ivory or soft stone, which have been found here and there in the Upper Paleolithic of Europe. These facts, taken in conjunction with the Negroid traits ascribed to the two Grimaldi skeletons just mentioned, seem to hint at some African influence on Aurignacian art. Any more definite conclusion than this, however, we should hardly be justified in drawing as yet." (see p. 78 in Bishop, 1930)

The Grimaldi man and woman, are from the Late Paleolithic and lived 22,000 to 26,0000 years ago. They were modern humans. It is interesting that these ancient modern humans in Southern Europe were assumed to be Bushmen, we know that Europeans share the same pale skin pigmentation that Europeans have (see post).

Some like Clyde Winters support interactions between Khoisan and Europe (see his comment on a formal paper) suggesting that the " southern African Khoisan (SAK) population... SAK people were the Grimaldi and Cro-Magnon people of Western Eurasia... By 70 kya Khoisan people probably spread hg N into West Africa... Sometime before 40kya there was probably a second migration event from Cameroon and possibly the Senegambian region into Northwest Africa on into Iberia." Hinting at a Gibraltar Crossing. Note that Winters is African-Centric and also supports an early migration of Africans, who peopled America.

Comments

I rate this corridor as unlikely, even though it is feasible. Perhaps future findings in Sicily will shed more light on the matter.

My next post (#4 in the series) will cover the Sinai, Northern Red Sea Route.

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

OOA Routes: Gibraltar (Post 2)

This is the second post in my series on the possible routes used by hominins (from Homo erectus to modern humans) for their out of Africa (OOA) migration, and, why not, for potential "Into" Africa migrations. Today's post covers the Gibraltar Strait.

Post 1: Where was the Out of Africa Corridor?
Post 2: OOA Routes: Gibraltar
Post 3: OOA Routes: Strait of Sicily
Post 4: OOA Routes: Sinai
Post 5: OOA Routes: Bab-el-Mandeb

Gibraltar

The Strait of Gibraltar is a narrow strait set between the southern tip of Spain and Gibraltar on the northern, European side, and Ceuta and Morocco on the southern, African side.

It is roughly 25 km long (16 mi.) and 14 km wide (almost 9 miles) and serves as a waterway linking the Atlantic Ocean on the west with the Mediterranean Sea on the east. It is quite deep, ranging from 300 to 900 meters (980 to 2,950 ft.)

Two tectonic plates meet here, the African and the European plates, and the movement of both plates led to the closure of an older strait that preceded Gibrlatar, the Betian Strait 5.96 Million years ago, sealing the Mediterranean off, cutting the inflow of water from the Atlantic Ocean. Evaporation over the next 600,000 years led to the drying out of the Mediterranean, with deserts and salt flats covering its barren former seabed (Messinian salinity crisis). Later, rifting along the plates' edges led to the formation of the current strait, and the catastrophic flooding that followed, refilled the Mediterranean basin (Zanclean Flood).

The strait is a continuous body of water, the coast of Europe can be seen from Morocco, and vice versa. Possibly enticing hominins to set out and cross it.

Tne idea was first suggested by Paul Pallary (1869-1942) in 1909, when he proposed that a type of stone industry was shared on both sides of the strait some 25,000 years ago, he called it "Iberomaurusian". This was taken up by Obermaier (1924) who applied it to a "Capsio Tardenoisian" culture, the former in Africa, the latter in Europe. In his work, Obermaier wrote: "Old Stone Age. First invasion — from Africa. The primitive Chellean and Acheulean industries in stone spread from Egypt over northern Africa and through Spain into western Europe. At a later cultural stage, the Mousterian, which constitutes a further evolution of the two earlier cultures (its beginning estimated at 40,000 B.C.), fossil remains of men of the Neanderthal Race are found in Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Jugo-Slavia, and Czecho-Slovakia. The Heidelberg Race, remains of which are found in Germany, is probably ancestral to this race and may have been contemporaneous with the Pre-Chellean culture ; no trace of it has yet been found in Spain."

Spanish historian and archaeologist Luis Pericot Garcí in the 1940s and 1950s incorporated the notion to his Aterian (north Africa) and Soultrean (Europe) common culture he "organized a crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar by raft—a crossing that proved more difficult than anticipated and could not be completed. He even believed that connections might have existed between Africa and Spain as early as the Lower Paleolithic, a theory potentially supported by the presence of numerous cleavers and other Acheulean artifacts of African character in the Iberian Peninsula."

Finally, Henriette Alimen (1900-1996) explored the potential crossings from Acheulean Africa to Europe via Gibraltar and the Tunisia-Sicily strait.

Modern scholars do not agree with any of these theories.

Stepping stones for an easy crossing

The image above (Fig 2. in Gibert Beotas, 2003) displays the current coasts of Africa and Spain at Gibraltar, and how it would look with a lower sea level after it droped 150 meters (492 ft.) Islands appear on the western side of the Strait. Gibert Beotas calculates that the distance is reduced to half, from 14 km to 5 plus 2 km, island hopping.

Straus, 2001 noted that a lower sea level would make some of the seabed appear on the surface: "several small islands would appear within the Strait in the sector between Paloma Point and Tangiers whenever sea fell further than 100 m below its present level, making for several short water crossings, none greater than ca. 5 km if this (western) route were to have been taken. The distances would have been even shorter under full glacial conditions, with sea-level regression of 120-130 m"

Regarding the crossing, Flemming, 2003 points out that "To the west of the narrowest part of the Strait a group of substantial shoals become large islands at glacial low sea level, and these were visible vegetated land masses, completely changing the appearance of the Strait from either shore. The length of the Strait itself was increased, and the archipelago provided a stepping stone and safety net to anyone seeking to cross."

Straus cites (see the article here too) who suggested that Lower Pleistocene hominids like Homo ergaster could have crossed at Gibraltar around 1.8 to 1.6 Million years ago when it was only 6.5 km wide during the Aullen marine transgression.

Straus concludes that it is unlikely that early Homo crossed the strait put it is "somewhat plausible" but any later contact is discarded during the Middle Pleistocene. Only, during the Upper Pleistocene did modern humans cross the strait, navigating across it.

Proof

Gibert Beotas aruges that ancient stone tools discovered in Orce, South Eastern Spain (Andalusia), knapped using Oldowan techniques, and dated to 1.4 Million years ago, are possibly the work of hominins who used the Gibraltar crossing, instead of taking the longer route across the Levant, Anatolia, the Balkans and eastern Europe, central Europe and then into Iberia.

There is evidence of animals crossing the straits since Miocene times, a two-way exchange between Europe and Africa. Humans could have done the same. Another fact to bear in mind is that hominins did cross open stretches of sea to reach Luzon in the Philippines, and Flores in Indonesia.

Arribas and Palmqvist, 1999 (see the article here too) argue that "crossing large rivers and mountainous chains, with adaptations to different vegetation zones and to broader ranges of temperature and rainfall, and a simultaneous colonization of Europe through Gibraltar, perhaps Sicily, and the Eastern Mediterranean helps to explain the presence in several north circummediterranean sites of Spain (Orce), Italy (Pirro Nord), Greece (Apollonia)and Georgia (Dmanisi) of certain African species of large mammals which have not been found, at present, in Central Europe during Lower Pleistocene times, such as M. whitei, whose dispersal seems to have been limited up to the 40°N parallel"

They included the following map in their research paper:

Animals like wild boars found in North Africa and Spain share a common genetic origin. Soria-Boix, 2017 wrote that "Contacts across the Strait of Gibraltar in the Pleistocene have been studied in different research papers, which have demonstrated that this apparent barrier has been permeable to human and fauna movements in both directions. Our study, based on the genetic analysis of wild boar (Sus scrofa), suggests that there has been contact between Africa and Europe through the Strait of Gibraltar in the Late Pleistocene (at least in the last 90,000 years), as shown by the partial analysis of mitochondrial DNA. Cytochrome b and the control region from North African wild boar indicate a close relationship with European wild boar, and even some specimens belong to a common haplotype in Europe. The analyses suggest the transformation of the wild boar phylogeography in North Africa by the emergence of a natural communication route in times when sea levels fell due to climatic changes, and possibly through human action, since contacts coincide with both the Last Glacial period and the increasing human dispersion via the strait."

Last July I posted about The common ancestor of Denisovans, Neanderthals and Humans, citing a paper by Hublin, 2026 who mentioned that "The Spanish and Moroccan fossils share several features in their teeth and mandibles. Both groups display a combination of archaic and derived features reminiscent of later hominins... These similarities revive the question of possible exchanges across the Strait of Gibraltar during the EP."

Comments

The crossing is feasible, short, and was done by animals over the course of the past few million years. There are fossils in Spain and Morocco that suggest an exchange between Africa and Europe (possibly both ways). This could be one of the corridors used by hominins to people the world either from Eurasia into Africa, or the other way round.

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

Where was the Out of Africa corridor? (post 1)

The African origin of modern humans, and all hominins (including Homo erectus and other Eurasian hominins) implies that they originated there, descending from the great apes of that continent (i.e. Chimpanzees) and later migrated out of Africa into the Old World, and much more recently, via Berigia, into the Americas.

But, which was the course the ancient hominins that led to erectus, the later ones leading to Neanderthals and Denisovans, and finally those leading to us, took to move out of Africa? Which was the route?

In fact there is no certainty on this matter, and more than one route have been proposed for the Out Of Africa migration. These routes are shown below, in a map of Africa and the closest points that separate it from Eurasia. These are, from west to east, Gibraltar, the Strait of Sicily, Sinai, and Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.

The "out of" and "into" Africa routes for hominin migration. Copyright © 2026 by Austin Whittall

These routes were proposed by anthropologists because they are feasible. It is easier to cross 10 km of water via Gibraltar, where you can see the European coast from Morocco in North Africa than setting sail from Egypt northwards into an open sea without knowing what lies ahead. This can be said about the other two crossings (Straits of Sicily and Bab-el-Mandeb), where the stepping stones across the Red Sea and the Mediterranean are visible from the coast of Africa.

Feasibility also implies that the water can be navigated. In fact, Homo erectus crossed open stretches of sea 800,000 years ago in Indonesia, and also to reach Crete. This suggests that they had seafaring abilities.

Another factor is that animals seem to have been able to negotiate with these sea crossings, so one would expect humans could do the same.

The final argument is the similarity, or continuity of certain stone knapping technologies on both sides of the gap, suggesting a population bridging the gap during a migration. This is something seen in the Levant, where archaics and even modern humans are found in Israel (Levant).

Two way routes

The fact that they were used to exit Africa (the articles I cite are all formal ones, and they uphold the African origin of hominins and modern humans) does not mean they were used in the opposite direction, for "Into Africa" migrations.

Neanderthal alleles have been found in Africa, sourced from Eurasia; and it is possible that Homo erectus originated in Eurasia and migrated into Africa, or that modern humans did the same, peopling Africa. It is possible that the common ancestor of chimpanzees, gorillas, and all homo species originated in Eurasia.

Over the next posts, I will describe each of these corridors, Gibraltar, Strait of Sicily, Sinai, and Bab-el-Mandeb.

This Series of Posts comprises the following posts

Post 1: Where was the Out of Africa Corridor?
Post 2: OOA Routes: Gibraltar
Post 3: OOA Routes: Strait of Sicily
Post 4: OOA Routes: Sinai
Post 5: OOA Routes: Bab-el-Mandeb

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

On archaic introgressions — John Hawks and the 80:20 theory

There is a gradual shift among mainstream scientists who are now accepting that modern humans are the result of different contributions from ancestral populations that took place within Africa (or possibly in the Levant), archaic people different from both Neanderthals and Denisovans.

An example of the above can be found in a recent article posted two days ago by renown anthropologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, John Hawks, titled Modern humans evolved from an 80-20 mixture of two deep streams — Genome models are converging on a scenario in which two stem lineages separated 1.5 million years ago, and merged together 300,000 years ago.

In his post, Hawks looks into the different papers published over the past few years, that suggest ancient hominins admixed and the outcome was the human lineage. It is nicely written and mentions some of the research articles that I have mentioned in previous posts (like Padilla Iglesias, 2025, Mallick, 2016, Ragsdale, 2023, Rogers, 2026).

Hawks explores the suggestion that we evolved from the admixture of two archaic lineages, an event that took place 300,000 years ago. One of these groups provided 80% of our genes and the other one, 20%. He also suggests that the Homo naledi (Hawks played an important role in the discovery and analysis of this hominin) could be a possible ancestor of the older archaics because it split from our lineage around 1.5 million years ago (Mya). Other options are the Bodo and Kabwe hominins, but he points out that there is a gap in the fossils corresponding to the period spanning 1 to 1.5 Mya the date the two groups or "stems" split apart. Did they evolve "... from earlier, H. erectus-like ancestors"? or, as he suggests, (and this is very interesting) the basal ancestors were not living in Africa!

An Eurasian Origin

I will quote Hawks directly (highlighting is mine):

"A third scenario places the stem populations on different continents. Suppose that one of the stems, which gave rise to Neanderthals and Denisovans as well as the majority of the modern human gene pool, inhabited southwest Asia. The minority stem might then have inhabited part of East Africa or southern Africa. Putting the stem populations on different continents separated by the Sahara Desert would provide a biogeographic reason for the million-year separation of the stem populations. With low levels of gene flow like the Ragsdale model, it would be a multicontinental multiregional evolution scenario.
This scenario might fit the idea proposed by José Bermúdez de Castro and María Martinón-Torres in a 2013 paper, which proposed two “hotspots” of evolution for Pleistocene Homo, one in Southwest Asia and the other in East Africa. In their concept, the Levantine Corridor was an area with near-continuous habitation that gave rise to successive range expansions into Europe and other parts of Eurasia. Homo antecessor as represented in Spain was an early dispersal, possibly the first, and Neanderthals and Denisovans were later dispersals. The Levantine Corridor could well be the home of a Cousins-like Population A."

The suggestion of a population in the Middle East, spanning modern Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordania and probably Irak, and Saudi Arabia, is the origin of modern humans is very reasonable. That area was probably a vast refugium (or multiple refugia) safe from the rigors of harsh ice ages in northern Europe, and the desertification (for a recent paper on the climate in Eurasia see Zan, 2024) and arid conditions that prevailed for most of the Pleistocene. From there, pulses of hominins moved out, fanning into Eurasia (H. erectus, Dmanisi, the Flores Island hobbits, Homo antecessor, Neanderthals and Denisovans).

In the meantime, primitive archaics populated Africa south of the Sahara (H. naledi and H. rhodesiensis) which later admixed with modern humans, providing diversity to the African genome. Below is a map depicting this scenario.

The origin of humans in the Levant . A. Whittall © 20206>

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Humans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Denisovan may have split from Homo erectus

A recent research article (not peer-reviewed) published in BioRxiv (Scalable ARG-free Detection of Denisovan-mediated Superarchaic Introgression Reveals Heterogeneous Patterns across Populations. Noel McAllister, Sebastian Zöllner, Xinjun Zhang, bioRxiv 2026.06.25.734355; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.06.25.734355), used simulations based on a specific computing program to explore the sites in our genomes where superarchaic introgression may be found. Introgression that reached us via Denisovans.

It looks into the genome of modern populations and finds that HLA/MHC loci have higher introgression scores than other sites. This, according to the authors, "...is consistent with previous evidence that immune-related loci retain archaic variants. At the same time, HLA/MHC is among the most polymorphic regions of the human genome and has been shaped by pathogen-mediated and balancing selection, both of which can preserve deeply divergent haplotypes and generate unusually deep local genealogies..." However, they caution that these high scores may not only be due to archaic introgression: " ...HLA/MHC is also one of the clearest examples of long-term balancing selection, which also preserves deeply diverged haplotypes without recent introgression... We therefore interpret the HLA/MHC signal cautiously. It should not be treated as definitive evidence for superarchaic ancestry by itself. Nonetheless, its repeated elevation across all three populations is notable and suggests that immune-related regions may be especially informative targets for future local haplotype, ARG-based, and functional analyses."

It makes sense that alleles linked to immunity, received from superarchaics, if they provide a benefit, will be preserved across generations.

The paper then discusses Denisovans and mentions an interesting fact, that Denisovans could have evolved from Homo erectus: "Our results also intersect with the recent paleoproteomic evidence suggesting that some Denisovan superarchaic ancestry may ultimately derive from populations related to H. erectus."

It also notes that population structure can be mistaken for introgression: "A further limitation is that deep population structure and introgression remain intrinsically difficult to separate. Structured ancestral populations can generate old coalescent times and divergent haplotypes, and some recent models have shown that deep structure may explain signals previously interpreted as archaic or ghost admixture."

It presents a scenario that I had not read about before: "Hominin evolution may have involved both long-lived structured populations and episodic admixture among deeply diverged groups." Which is very plausible, we can imagine, especially in Africa this scenario, with archaic populations and ancestral modern humans living in isolated, deeply structured populations admixing sporadically, and adding diversity to the Homo sapiens group.

The other branches of the human tree also followed that pattern, with Neanderthals in western Eurasia and Denisovans in the Eastern part of Asia. Mixing with modern humans as our ancestors met them.

Homo erectus has been shown to have admixed with Denisovans (see this post), but, this article suggests that Denisovans evolved from Homo erectus, which is a very reasonable assumption. I recently posted about Denisovans and Homo heidelbergensis being related (also Neanderthals), it is possible that the common ancestor for these groups evolved from erectus (via Homo antecessor) in Eurasia.

Evidence seems to be building a stronger case for an Eurasian origin for hominins.

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

The common ancestor of Denisovans, Neanderthals and Humans

A paper published in February of this year, in Nature, by Hublin et al., analyzed the shape of jaws and teeth of several fossils collected in Morocco and compared them to those of Neanderthals, the older Homo antecessor, modern humans, and Homo erectus to try to unravel how our Homo sapiens species evolved in North Africa, the site where the oldest human remains have been found (300,000 years old).

The paper mentions that the common ancestor of modern humans, Neanderthals, and Asian Denisovans lived between 765 and 550 thousand years ago (ka), but where it lived is still a mystery. Some studies have proposed that the Homo antecessor, whose remains were uncovered in the Gran Dolina site, Atapuerca, Spain (950-770 ka) is the candidate for this last common ancestor of the later homo genus.

The Homo antecessor fossils are named in the paper as TD6, after the layer where they were found. If antecessor is the ancestor, it means we had a European origin. However, all of the oldest Homo sapiens remains older than 90,000 years, have been found either in North Africa or in the Levant, taken by the proponents of the Out of Africa (OOA) theory as an indication of an African origin for modern humans, and Africa as the site of the last common ancestor of Denisovans, Neanderthals, and us.

This paper compares remains found in a site close to Casablanca, Morocco, in northwest Africa, known as the Grotte à Hominidés (which we name here as ThI-GH). These remains are in the right time period to be ancestral to all groups (773 ka).

The conclusions of Hublin et al., are quoted below, I have highlighted some relevant parts:

"In North Africa, the ThI-GH hominins are the only specimens unearthed within an indisputable stratigraphic context and securely dated to the MBT at a nominal age of 773 ±4 ka. These hominins cannot be directly compared with later specimens, such as the Kabwe or Bodo skulls, which have been tentatively assigned to H. heidelbergensis. Not only do these specimens differ substantially in age, but they also lack preservation of comparable anatomical parts. Our analysis suggests that the ThI-GH hominins probably belong to an evolved form of H. erectus sensu lato in North Africa, much as H. antecessor does in Europe. However, the ThI-GH hominins offer an interesting contrast to both the Spanish fossils and the considerably older fossils from Tighennif (Algeria), which are likely to date to at least 1,000 ka. The fossil mandibles from Tighennif appear more primitive, larger and more robust than both the European H. antecessor and the northwest African ThI-GH fossils. The Spanish and Moroccan fossils share several features in their teeth and mandibles. Both groups display a combination of archaic and derived features reminiscent of later hominins (Supplementary Table 25). These similarities revive the question of possible exchanges across the Strait of Gibraltar during the EP. Nevertheless, the ThI-GH hominins are different from the TD6 hominins. The pattern of these differences suggests that regional differentiation between Europe and North Africa was already present by the late EP. Apparent Neanderthal-like features on the larger ThI-GH-1 mandible could reflect primitive retentions, allometric effects or convergent evolution but, when more phylogenetically informative dental characters are considered, the Spanish specimens appear more derived towards the Neanderthal morphology that later emerged in western Eurasia.
The origin of H. sapiens, and the precise timing of the divergence of its ancestral populations from the Neanderthal–Denisovan clade, remain subjects of debate. Anatomical evidence has at times been used to argue for a split predating 800 ka and even for an alternative Asian ancestry of our species. In this context, the Maghreb fossils are key to understanding the diversification of MP hominins. The morphology of the ThI-GH hominins places them close to the split between the African and Eurasian lineages. Our findings not only align with the phylogenetic structure inferred from palaeogenetic data but also highlight the Maghreb as a pivotal region for understanding the emergence of our species, reinforcing the case for an African rather than a Eurasian ancestry of H. sapiens."

Comments

The closing phrase about an African origin of modern humans is expected as the authors don't want to go against the established dogma. However, the point about intercontinental exchange via Gibraltar during the Early Pleistocene is extremely interesting. It is very likely that our common ancestor, even H. erectus had the ability to cross such a narrow body of water in boats. The similarity of Atapuerca specimens with Neanderthals is also relevant, as Neanderthals are Eurasian, not African. The differences between H. heidelbergensis specimens within Africa and the Moroccan fossils hints at a separate stem of hominins in North Africa vs. central and southern Africa. Furthermore, the authors suggest that it was Homo erectuswho evolved into the Moroccan specimens, and that the erectus present in Africa were more primitive and robust than the European lineage.

Taken together, this suggests, in my opinion, That the erectus line, after evolving in Eurasia, moved into Northern Africa via Gibraltar, and had already settled in Western Europe, and evolved in this region (Spain-Morocco) into the common ancestor of Neanderthals-Denisovans and Humans, in Europe.

How can we account for the absence of Denisovans and Neanderthals in Africa? But, assume that modern humans originated there? This is a serious flaw in the African origin theory.

An answer to those questions is that the "common ancestor" migrated east into Eurasia and the Levant, diverging there into Neanderthals and Denisovans who, respectively, colonized Western and Eastern Eurasia. From this common root, modern humans split, entering Africa via Sinai or maybe Bab el Mandeb, while spreading eastwards across Eurasia.

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