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 © 

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 © 

San (Khoisan) and Europeans

Following my previous post on similarities between San people in southern South Africa, and Europeans, I read a paper about the San (Khoisan) and their "antiquity". It reports them as an ancient population that retained a large effective population while that of other groups fell (i.e. other Africans, Europeans, Asians, and the Out of Africa migrants).

The paper published in Nature in 2014 by Kim et al., (Khoisan hunter-gatherers have been the largest population throughout most of modern-human demographic history). The image below shows how Ne (effective population) evolves over time (oldest to the right), for San, African Yoruba, Europeans, and Asians. As you can see all groups (actually, the ancestors leading to each of these populations) have similar population sizes till 100,000 years ago when a dramatic drop in population sizes occurs. I don't understand how they obtained Ne values for hominin populations 2 to 4 million years ago, this was the days of Australopiths and probably Homo habilis.

Effective population sizes for San, Africans, Asians and Europeans. Fig. 3 a in Kim et al., 2014

This drop in effective population size is attributed to climate changes within Africa. The paper includes a series of maps as Fig. 12 in its Supplementary Material to explain the process. They can be seen below:

Modern humans originated in Africa (a), blue circle in South Africa seems to imply an origin there, though the paper does not specify the location. Then these people spread north (b), the orange oval marks the new territories. Then came the climate change (c) around 150 or 100 kya. Drought in western and central Africa hit the humans there in central, western, and eastern Africa, but spared the San people in the southern part of Africa. This coincided with a fragmented population (structured) with isolated groups that did not interact with each other (see the different dots and colors on the map, marking these groups). Populations declined central and western Africa, and when the ancestors of Non-Africans (green arrows) (d) migrated Out of Africa (OOA), they carried this lower Ne, and it dwindled even more due to bottlenecks and founder effects as they advanced into Eurasia. The San, however, kept their population intact.

The authors reconstruction of this period is summarized as follows: "After the earliest split, between the ancestral Khoisan and non-Khoisan populations ~100–150 kyr ago, the ancestral Khoisan population maintained their high genetic diversity, while the effective population size of the non-Khoisan continued to decline for 30~120 kyr ago and lost more than half of its diversity. The ‘Out of Africa’ migration ~40–60 kyr ago accounts for the observed population split between African and non-African populations, and the subsequent smaller effective population size of non-Africans compared with non-Khoisan Africans."

Comments

However, and interestingly, as pointed out in my previous post, the San and Europeans share several unique allele variants that are ancestral (found also in Neanderthals and Denisovans) whcih confer lighter pigmented skin than that found among the remaining Africans and also South Asians and Australo-Melanesians, who carry a later (derived) mutation for darker pigmentation.

How does this similarity between a specific OOA group and San people tie in with the evolution and migration sproposed by Kim et al.?

Not well. We would have to imagine a group that split from the San, moved north, lived in isolation in Central Africa, then survived the climate crisis there, moved north, left Africa, surviving the founder effect, bottlenecks and genetic drift, established themselves in Europe and somehow managed to keep their skin-color alleles intact. While all the other groups in Africa mutated and adopted a dark skin set of alleles. Too complex to be the explanation.

The San (Khoisan or bushmen) have always intrigued me since the 1980s movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy", I was taken aback by their pale skin and oriental factions. So different from the usual African features. People living in the deserts of Namibia with a hunter-gatherer culture in the 20th century! I have never found a paper explaining their similarity with East Asians. I will explore this strange trait in a coming post.

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

Denisovan and Neanderthal alleles in Africans at higher levels than in non-Africans

We usually hear that the modern humans, left Africa and, in Eurasia encountered their relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, mating with them and sharing genes. This resulted in non-Africans having snips of genetic material from both ancient groups, with different levels depending on their geographic locations (Denisovan is higher in Oceanians, South eastern, and Eastern Asians, and Native Americans, while Neanderthal is higher among Europeans and Western Asians). Africans, on the other hand have almost zero introgression of Neanderthal genes (the little they have came from mixing with Eurasians who back-migrated into Africa after the OOA event), and zero Denisovan content. The Denisovans never made it back into Africa.

A paper I just read says the opposite! Africans have higher levels of Denisovan and Neanderthal genes than non-Africans.. This paper is ten-years-old (Povysil G, Hochreiter S. IBD Sharing between Africans, Neandertals, and Denisovans. Genome Biol Evol. 2016 Dec 1;8(12):3406-3416. doi: 10.1093/gbe/evw234. PMID: 28158547; PMCID: PMC5381509) and contradicts the history of migration and admixture mentioned further up. Let's see what this paper says and how it explains the higher level of Denisovan and Neanderthal genes in Africans.

p>First, the data, below is Table 1 from Povysil and Hoechretier, 2016. Unfortunately, the table does not include Native Americans! and therefore these are always underrepresented in research articles!

Original caption: Note.—The column labeled “Chr.” gives the chromosome, and “Neandertal” and “Denisovan” group IBD segments matching the Neandertal and Denisovan genomes, respectively. “ALL” gives the total number of IBD segments matching the respective ancient genome, “EAS”, “SAS”, “EUR”, and “AFR” report the number of matching IBD segments shared exclusively by East Asians, South Asians, Europeans, and Africans, respectively, and the percentage compared to the total number of IBD segments matching the respective ancient genome.

Ancient admixture within Africa?

The authors extracted Identical By Descent or IBD segments from genetic data of the 1000 Genomes Phase 3 dataset. They found two types of IBD segments that are shared between modern human beings and also with our ancestors, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. These are the "longer" and the "shorter" segment types.

The long segments are those found in Eurasians, and the ones shared with Neanderthals and Denisovans are found at higher frequencies in Southern and Eastern Asians. Long segments seem to be related to admixture events outside of Africa.

The short segments, on the other hand, are shared by Africans, and for this reason, the authors believe that they represent ancient "events involving ancestors of humans and other ancient hominins within Africa."

The paper says that shorter segments are "presumably older than longer ones, the segments we extracted reveal events from the very distant past. We found short IBD segments that match the Neandertal and/or Denisovan genome and are shared mainly by Africans. These segments may either stem from a common ancestor with subsequent incomplete lineage sorting or more likely from an interbreeding of ancestors of humans and other ancient hominins within Africa."

They found a surprisingly high frequency of archaic short segments in the sexual X chromosome (that in men is inherited from their mothers, and in women, one part of their pair comes from their mothers, and the other from their fathers): "...chromosome X, on which segments that are shared by Africans and match the Neandertal and/or Denisovan genome were even more prominent. Our results indicate that interbreeding with other hominins was a common feature of human evolution starting already long before ancestors of modern humans left Africa."

The logical explanation for this high frequency of archaic genes in Africans is that they met and bred with these people within Africa. But, this goes against the hypothesis that Africa had highly a structured population with many small, isolated groups, that only occasionally met, and that each of them harbored a high diversity which, when they finally blended, led to the current diversity encountered in Africa. The paper says the following:

"One interpretation of our results is that ancestors of humans and ancient hominins interbred within Africa. The hypothesis of ancient substructures in Africa with limited gene flow between subpopulations of hominins does not contradict this interbreeding. Neandertals and Denisovans could be more closely related to Africans than to out-of-Africa populations because of more interactions between their ancestors. In this case, since the ancestors of Africans and Neandertals/Denisovans were not clearly separated, this could be considered “admixture” rather than “interbreeding”.

So, the limited number of Denisovan or Neanderthal alleles in non-Africans would be the outcome of the bottleneck, and founder effect that took place as they left Africa, carrying a limited subset of the original Neanderthal and Denisovan genes.

The second explanation is similar, but is pushed further back in time. The shared genes are due to a common-origin of Neanderthals, Denisovans and Modern Humans:

"Another interpretation of the extensive IBD sharing between Africans and ancient genomes is that these shared IBD segments originate from a common ancestor of Neandertals/Denisovans and humans. They can only be found in modern Africans due to incomplete lineage sorting. According to this scenario, the detected IBD segments arose first in the population that existed prior to the ancient separation of Neandertals, Denisovans and modern humans, but were relatively rare. Consequently they survived in both archaic humans and in present-day Africans, while drifting to a very low frequency in non-Africans.

The authors analyze this hyptothesis and note that Africans carrying the Neanderthal-Denisovan genetic snippets either carry all of them (there are over 20 of these "rare variants") or none! This presents the improbable situation that all the other people (who carried intermediate ammounts of these alleles) died out leaving no descent. The paper suggests a way out: populations were separated.

"In our opinion, it is unlikely that, for thousands of IBD segments, only these extremes survived while all the intermediate cases died out completely. Consequently, we assume that the source population was separated from all the other populations for a long time and, therefore, acquired such a high number of mutations. We do not know, whether the separated population was already a Neandertal, a Denisovan, their ancestor, or a different hominin. We cannot rule out, that the IBD segments also existed in ancestors of modern Eurasians and were lost due to strong genetic drift. However, our results suggest an interbreeding within Africa that involved a population that was isolated for an extended period of time. This early interbreeding can still be detected via IBD segments that are shared between Africans and Neandertals and/or Denisovans.

The alternative that the African alleles are due to a back-to-Africa migration is discarded because Africans have exclusive alleles not found elsewhere and they are found in all Africans, suggesting a wide distribution.

This study also found a high level of "segments shared between South Asians and Neandertals and/or Denisovans than between other non-African populations and these ancient genomes." This, has been proven time and time again over the past ten years. Interestingly, the authors speculate about the reason for this prevalence of Denisovan genes and offer three explanations. All current papers focus on expanation #1, ignoring the other two, but we should not forget that there are other alternatives that explain the Denisovan introgression in Oceanians and Southeast Asians: "Recent investigations found that South Asians share a surprisingly high amount of DNA with the Denisovan genome (Sankararaman et al. 2016). In our analysis the amount is even higher. Possible explanations for this finding are as follows: (1) additional interbreeding events with ancestors of South Asians, (2) introduction of IBD segments from ancient genomes into other non-African populations via South Asians and not directly, and (3) combinations of bottlenecks, genetic drift, and different selective pressures."

Closing Remarks

Africans seem to have ancient lineages of Denisovan and Neanderthal alleles. An admixture that possibly took place in Africa, within the continent. How does this tally with current theories of an exclusive outside of Africa admixture? It is thought provoking to imagine introgression within Africa, because it alters the timelines of the admixture dates proposed in the different admixture papers (see my post with links to all my posts on admixture and introgressions).

It is a pity that this paper, like most papers, ignores data from Amerindians. Including them would probably uncover furhter research aveneues.

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

Oldest Homo Sapiens Sites in the Old World

The map below caught my attention while reading a new article by Zhang et al., 2026 it shows the oldest sites where Homo sapiens remains have been found.

Two things surprised me: (1) Despite Africa being touted the "Cradle of Mankind", 40% of the sites over 100 ky are found in Eurasia. (2) Of the 50 to 30 ky sites, 3 are found in Africa, and the other 14 are in Eurasia and Australia. Of course, the map shows partial information, so there are more sites in Africa, but it is suprising to notice such a prevalence of sites outside of Africa.

Fig. 1. Examples of early H. sapiens fossils older than 100 ka (red circles) and younger specimens dating to 50–30 ka ago (yellow circles) in Africa, Eurasia and Oceania. Fig 1 from Zhang et al., 2026

The oldest H. sapiens fossil outside of Africa is from the Greek Cave of Apidima where Apidima 1 skull was found (210,000 years old); see Harvati et al. 2019.

The second oldest is the 190,000-year-old jawbone from the Misliya Cave in Israel, reported by Hershkovitz et al, 2018.

The oldest African site is the Irhoud, Morocco, reported by Hublin et al, 2017, and dated to 315±34 kya. However these hominins have a mix of archaic and modern features that make some scholars wonder if it is a human or another hominin: "[They] have a facial morphology very similar to extant H. sapiens, as well as endocranial volumes that fall within the contemporary range of variation. However, their braincase shapes are elongated rather than globular, suggesting that distinctive features of brain shape, and possibly brain function, evolved within H. sapiens." (Scerri et al., 2018).

The next two African specimens are equal to, or younger than the Eurasian specimens!: Both from Ethiopia, the 195,000-year-old remains from Omo Kibish, and 160,000-year-old bones from Herto. A 2022 paper pushes the dates further back in time to ~230 kya. However, note that they may not be modern humans at all: "The Herto hominids are morphologically and chronologically intermediate between archaic African fossils and later anatomically modern Late Pleistocene humans. They therefore represent the probable immediate ancestors of anatomically modern humans. Their anatomy and antiquity constitute strong evidence of modern-human emergence in Africa." (White et al., 2003).

What is Anatomically Modern Human?

The key issue in my (layman's) opinion is that there seems to be no clear definition of what an Anatomically Modern Human is. Someone who looks like us even though they may not yet have developed behaviors similar to ours.

With a handful of deformed and partial remains (a pice of jaw here, a skullcap there, a few teeth over there) it is impossible to decide if those people who differ from us, and also between themselves, are the norm, or probably outliers of populations that had large intra-population variability.

Does a globe-shaped skull imply more homo-sapiens-similarity than a human-like jaw? Where is the line? Does an oblong skull like the ones found in Morocco count as humans or not? A mossaic of features is human? or primitive? What do archaeologists think about this?

We know that brain size evolved in homo species, and this growth influenced the shape of the skull as different areas of the brain developed, pushed by genetic changes and natural selection. More complex cognitive abilities appeared, the stone tools used by homo individuals gradually changed, improving, becoming more efficient in the use of knapped stone. Acheulean tools of erectus were used for over 1.5 million years, unchanged. Then came Mousterian, Levallois and microblades in a faster sequence of improvement mirroring the changing behavior of our ancestors. The discovery of fire, clothing, use of bone, wood, complex tools, needles, fishooks, symbols engraved on small objects, rock art, burials, all reflect behavioural growth as brains developed.

This evolution led from small skulls, with slanted faces, massive jaws, no chins, heavy browridges, to current gracil, rounded skulls, chins, and high forehads over flat faces.

Is there a sharp line between Modern Humans and "the rest"?

Pearson, 2008 looked into this matter in a detailed paper that ponders the archaic and modern morphology, the reasons for variability (evolutionary adaptation, genetic drift, and the shortcomings of the statistical and biological approaches to the subject.

A very interesting research article by Simon Neubauer, Jean-Jacques Hublin, and Philipp Gunz, 2018, analyzed the shape of the skulls and brains, as well as their size. Contemporary human beings have globular (balloon-shaped) brains with an upright forehead and a prominent parietal, the area occupied by the cerebellum is larger and rounded. Or faces are flat. On the other hand, the homo people before us had slanting faces, and elongated brains. (see image comparing a Human and a Neanderthal skull and brain, from Fig. 1 in the 2018 paper above. The authors compared different parameters of brains and skulls of Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and "Humans" from three periods: (1) very early specimens (200-300 kya) from Morocco and Ethiopia, (2) later people from the Middle East and East Africa (100-130 kya), and (3) more recent humans 35-10 kya. The images below show how they align using Principal Component Analysis:

Fig. 2 bgPCA of endocranial shape (top) and Fig. 4 bgPCA of endocranial form (bottom). Arrows show the Evolutionary trends of shape changes in archaic and modern individuals are shown as regressions on geologic age. Simon Neubauer, Jean-Jacques Hublin, and Philipp Gunz, 2018

Clearly, there is an evolution from primitive to modern features, with group (2), which included these samples: three from the Levant, Skhul V, Qafzeh 6 and Qafzeh 9 ages 115 ky, and one from Africa, the Ngaloba LH 18 skull from Laetoli, Tanzania (120 kya), closest to moderns and group (3), the latter aged 10 to 30 kya, have brains and skulls that are definitely modern.

Even Anatomically Modern Humans, as they dispersed across the globe following the OOA events carried different skull shapes that can still be identified in contemporary people, and have been used to suggest two migrations and two routes into Eurasia (the "two layer" hypothesis). One comprising Papuans and Oceanians following a South Asian route shares elongated skulls with Africans, the other across Central Asia into Siberia, Europe and East Asia has globular skulls, Europeans have compact jaws, Native Americans and NE Asians share large skulls, higher faces and cranial vaults with tighter foreheads (see Matsumura et al., 2022 and Matsumura et al., 2019).

Even modern humans carry introgressions that modified their skull shape (Neanderthals), as reported by Goovaerts et al., 2025, which has added diversity to non-Africans. Human chins are linked by genes to the flatter face of Homo sapiens. Reearch by Schuch et al., 2025 found that slower and shorter growth after birth, and bone reorption during childhood is a distinctivly human feature, found in all modern humans and absent in Neanderthals, that leads to gracile faces lacking Neanderthal prognathism (jaw protrusion).

Scerri et al., 2018, discusses and questions the orthodox notion that modern humans evolved and emerged within one single, specific population located in a particular region of Africa. The paper aruges that fossils from the early days of humans are very different, and the genetic evidence pointing at a very deep and ancient population structure within Africa (I have mentioned this in other posts, involving isolation, small groups, archaic interbreeding and mutation rates that are different to non-Africans) also supports a multiregional origin involving separate populations, an "African Multi-regionalism."

These isolated popualtions in different environments evolved separately at different paces, and this would explain why they show a combination of archaic and modern traits (they were boxed off in different regions of Africa by very dry deserts and dense tropical jungles —n mountains or glaciers in Africa— and faced different environmental challenges). This article also puts forward some unanswered questions and suggests directions for future research:

"Resolving the speciation of H. sapiens and the character of ancestral populations represents a crucial first step in understanding the emergence of the morphological features that diagnose our species during the later Middle Pleistocene
...
Finally, were some of our anatomical traits inherited from transitional African forms before they became extinct? The range of dates for H. naledi and H. heidelbergensis confirms the late survival of at least two archaic species in Africa. The size and environmental diversity of Africa, particularly the poorly investigated forested regions, may have permitted the late survival of more archaic species as well as of early forms of H. sapiens. These discoveries have fuelled speculations that H. sapiens may have interbred with archaic species in Africa itself. Distinguishing admixture between species from the reintegration of diverse H. sapiens lineages represents a major challenge, with significant taxonomic implications.
...
while a globular braincase does seem to represent a synapomorphy of extant H. sapiens, can it be effectively characterized for application to the fossil record? We emphasize that H. sapiens is a lineage with deep and likely diverse African roots that challenge our use of terms such as ‘archaic H. sapiens’ and ‘anatomically modern humans’. Unless they can be operationalized with more clearly defined traits, such categories will have declining value. Diagnostics of H. sapiens must reflect trajectories of evolution rather than static views of our species – which has changed, and continues to change, at various scales."

Into Africa

I believe that it is possible that the homo group leading to Modern humans probably evolved in the Middle East, and moved into Africa from there. However, this notion is contrary to what science believes is the correct approach to our ancestry, and outlined above by Scerri et al. I have the feeling that Chinese scholars will continue their push to have humans appear and evolve in Eastern Asia. Future publications and research will show us how these ideas develop.

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

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

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

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

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

A very early split with a different sequence to it

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

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

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

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

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

Implications

Neanderthal Dispersal

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

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

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

Graphical abstract . Qiang Ji et al., 2021

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

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

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

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

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

Denisovans

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

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

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

Humans

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

The Gap in the fossil record

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

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

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

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

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

Middle Eastern Origin of Modern Humans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bipedal Apes first appeared in Europe (March 2026 paper)

A paper published on March 4, 2026 by Spassov, N., Youlatos, D., Böhme, M. et al. A (n early form of terrestrial hominine bipedalism in the Late Miocene of Bulgaria. Palaeobio Palaeoenv (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12549-025-00691-0) posits that the analysis of the bones of a hominine that is possibly a Graecopithecus discovered in Azmaka (Bulgaria), which is 7.2 million years old, including a very well preserved femur, shows it walked on two feet-

In line with my previous posts, this paper supports a Eurasian origin for hominines, and their migration back into Africa, as ancestors of gorillas, chimpanzees, and our homo ancestors: "The wooded-grassland savanna environment of the early Messinian locality of Azmaka suggests that terrestrial bipedalism likely evolved in a non-forested setting. The early Messinian age is critical to our understanding of mammalian palaeobiogeography and the intercontinental dispersals between Eurasia and Africa. We hypothesise that the descendants of the Azmaka hominine may have dispersed from Eurasia into Africa under the influence of climatic and environmental changes in the eastern Mediterranean. If such dispersal occurred, it may have been associated with subsequent re-occupation of more forested settings in both the ancestors of African apes and hominins."

Graecopithecus was a hominin

The paper in its final comment concludes that "If the Azmaka femur is attributable to Graecopithecus, the fact that it is bipedal (although transitional) represents additional evidence that this genus is a hominin".

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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 ancetstor", 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, frm 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

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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