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We're older than we thought

Bikewer

Penultimate Amazing
Bikewer
Joined
Sep 12, 2003
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Location
St. Louis, Mo.
Articles from Nature, The Atlantic, CNN indicate that the oldest Homo Sapiens remains to date have been found in Morocco:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science...s-have-been-found-in-an-unusual-place/529452/

These date to 300,000 years, considerably earlier than any previously-found fossils or remains.

Associated remains of fire usage, tools, etc. The jaws and teeth are quite modern, but the skull shape bears some more archaic features.
 
Not the way I feel right now. My legs are at least a half a million years old.
 
This is pretty amazing stuff, with big implications.

I've just had a look at my old maps of North Africa, and I've been within the thickness of a pen line to the location of the find. I found a skull there too.............but I guess a camel skull isn't quite so exciting.
 
That isn't too bad, archaic homo sapiens sapiens is found in caves in Israel at about 150,000 BP, with mixed population of 'gracile' features and more 'not gracile' features. Sounds like this site is similar.

The area in Marakeesh is just a couple months of slow walking away. So it is cool, not too surprising, it will also depend on the dating of the paleo botany and other stratigraphy to refine the date.
 
Dancing David said:
That isn't too bad, archaic homo sapiens sapiens is found in caves in Israel at about 150,000 BP, with mixed population of 'gracile' features and more 'not gracile' features. Sounds like this site is similar.

The area in Marakeesh is just a couple months of slow walking away. So it is cool, not too surprising, it will also depend on the dating of the paleo botany and other stratigraphy to refine the date.
Click to expand...

Well you could always Take the train from Casablanca going south... the Marrakesh Express will get you there in no time!!
 
Dancing David said:
That isn't too bad, archaic homo sapiens sapiens is found in caves in Israel at about 150,000 BP, with mixed population of 'gracile' features and more 'not gracile' features. Sounds like this site is similar.

The area in Marakeesh is just a couple months of slow walking away. So it is cool, not too surprising, it will also depend on the dating of the paleo botany and other stratigraphy to refine the date.
Click to expand...
Why walk?

“Early hominins may have used the seas as a highway, rather than seeing them as a barrier”

"The Mousterian culture is Paleolithic. And these spear heads furnish evidence that humans reached the islands of the Aegean Sea a quarter million years ago and maybe earlier. If confirmed, it means the first people on Naxos were Neanderthals, or their probable ancestors, Homo heidelbergensis or maybe even Homo erectus. But how did they get there -Could these archaic hominins have travelled by boat?

Never before did we consider Neanderthals seafaring people, let alone even more primitive populations. Now we must entertain that possibility."
 
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Red Baron Farms said:
Why walk?

“Early hominins may have used the seas as a highway, rather than seeing them as a barrier”

"The Mousterian culture is Paleolithic. And these spear heads furnish evidence that humans reached the islands of the Aegean Sea a quarter million years ago and maybe earlier. If confirmed, it means the first people on Naxos were Neanderthals, or their probable ancestors, Homo heidelbergensis or maybe even Homo erectus. But how did they get there -Could these archaic hominins have travelled by boat?

Never before did we consider Neanderthals seafaring people, let alone even more primitive populations. Now we must entertain that possibility."
Click to expand...


That is cool, I was just erring on the slow method, neolithic people and goods were fairly mobile.

Personally I find the 'search for the earliest human' to be kind of dumb.

Most animals and plant species are fairly widespread in their ranges and we already know that archaic homo sapiens crossed all sorts of environments. So I imagine fairly wide spread populations, mobile, interacting at low population densities.

The artifacts of preservation are much more constraining dependent on specific conditions. So preservation of a sample is very local and constrained, the actual populations we are interested in were more likely very widespread.
 
Red Baron Farms said:
Why walk?

“Early hominins may have used the seas as a highway, rather than seeing them as a barrier”

"The Mousterian culture is Paleolithic. And these spear heads furnish evidence that humans reached the islands of the Aegean Sea a quarter million years ago and maybe earlier. If confirmed, it means the first people on Naxos were Neanderthals, or their probable ancestors, Homo heidelbergensis or maybe even Homo erectus. But how did they get there -Could these archaic hominins have travelled by boat?

Never before did we consider Neanderthals seafaring people, let alone even more primitive populations. Now we must entertain that possibility."
Click to expand...

"Pettitt also points out that the tools on the islands have not been chemically dated, so estimates of their age are based entirely on their design." The article is 5 years old, I wonder of they've been dated yet? Or don't they have to date bone fragments found at the same spot?
 
casebro said:
"Pettitt also points out that the tools on the islands have not been chemically dated, so estimates of their age are based entirely on their design." The article is 5 years old, I wonder of they've been dated yet? Or don't they have to date bone fragments found at the same spot?
Click to expand...
If I find something new pops up, I'll let you know.
 
So, not 6,600 years ago? But that nice Mr. Hovind promised! Does this mean I'm also not going to heaven for sending him money?
 
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