Why Did Humans Evolve In Africa?

Why did humans evolve in Africa? Why

this continent and not Europe, Asia, or

the Americas? Think of the Earth like a

giant laboratory. Each continent is a

workstation running its own experiment.

Some are hot and humid, others are cold

and dry. Some are violent and hostile,

while others are more tranquil and

accommodating. Every aspect of every

environment is like a different

ingredient in the stew of life. And it

was the African experiment that created

the human lineage. That's puzzled

anthropologists for years, but it's an

even deeper question to ask why. It's a

more complicated question, too. In this

video, I'll show you the evidence, the

fossils, stone tools, and genetics that

all point to Africa. But we'll also dig

deeper into our primate evolution and

the global shifts that set the stage for

humanity's rise. So, to understand where

we come from, we must start our journey

in the distant past.

A useful place to begin is with the

early evolution of primates. When you

think of a primate, you probably think

of something like a chimp, an orangutan,

or maybe a lemur. But there are as many

as 500 species belonging to the primate

order today, and we are one of them. The

diversity among us is astounding. Yet,

there are a few things we all mostly

have in common. We have grasping hands,

nails instead of claws, forward- facing

eyes with keen vision, teeth adapted to

generalized diets, and relatively big

brains. Anthropologists have a rough

idea as to when these traits started to

converge into an animal we can call a

primate. It probably happened during the

Paleocene to Eosene transition, sometime

between 75 and 55 million years ago.

It's a wide window because evolution

doesn't hand us neat timestamps. For

those of you familiar with paleontology,

you'll know why this was an important

period in Earth's history. It marks the

end of the non-avian dinosaurs. Around

this time, they started going extinct,

likely due to an asteroid impact, and

mammals began to replace them. The

primate story stretches so far back that

our earliest ancestors may have shared

the planet with the last dinosaurs. Meet

Purgatorius. Its fossils have been found

in Montana, dating as old as 66 million

years ago. It was a tiny tree dwelling

mammal that looked like a shrew until

you peer at its ankles. Then you realize

it's some sort of proto primate. Those

highly mobile ankles are a clue. They

represent the kind of wrist and ankle

mobility later primates use for clinging

to branches. Running alongside it in the

fossil record are the plesiaformms. They

were something like a cross between a

squirrel and a tiny monkey. Their

remains have been found around the

globe. Like Purgatorius, they appear to

have also been a transitional species

between more rodent-like animals and

primates. What tips the scale in favor

of primates is their tooth pattern,

which is similar to modern-day lemurs

and lorises. Since these little critters

didn't have forward- facing eyes, hands

adapted to grasping, or big brains. They

weren't full members of the primate club

yet. The full-time members came in

around 55 million years ago. They are

called the primates. These were true

primates, including the adapids and

omiyoids. They start to show the full

suite of primate traits with those

forward- facing eyes for depth

perception, grasping hands and feet with

nails instead of claws, more flexible

shoulder and wrist joints, and

relatively larger brains than the

earlier purgator. So, why did these

traits evolve in the first place?

Experts have proposed a few different

hypotheses. Early on, it was believed

that they were simply adapting to life

in the trees. However, critics argue

that there are plenty of other tree

dwelling species that did not evolve

into primates. Alternatively, the visual

predation hypothesis argues that

primates evolved as stealthy insect

hunters. Their excellent vision and

precise grasping helped snatch up small,

fast prey. Another idea is the angioperm

radiation hypothesis. Modern flowering

plants called angioperms began to evolve

around the same time. Fruit and flowers

created new food sources, selecting for

color vision and fine motor skills.

Picture these early primates learning to

spot something ripe and red against the

backdrop of green leaves. It wouldn't

have been easy before evolving the

visual capacity to do so. Each idea

comes with evidence. They certainly

lived in the trees. Their teeth and

behavior suggests insectbased diets, and

the timing of fruing plants lines up

almost perfectly. Importantly, these

explanations aren't mutually exclusive.

For example, trees full of fruit also

hosted swarms of insects. So, these

little guys probably had access to both.

In all likelihood, it was some

combination of all three that created

the perfect evolutionary soup. Each

pressure would nudge primate anatomy and

behavior in similar directions. What

matters for our story is this. Primates

evolved traits that opened ecological

doors. These traits set the stage for

what would eventually produce us, a

smart, adaptable species. Next is a

crucial stage in primate evolution, and

it actually didn't happen in Africa.

Around 40 million years ago, the first

higher primates show up in the fossil

record. They're called anthropoids, and

they included the ancestors of all

monkeys, apes, and humans. This is when

the primate experiment started to look

more modern. The oldest anthropoid

fossil was found in China. The

remarkably tiny specimen is called

eosyimius, which means a dawn monkey.

It's their short heel bone that tells us

they moved around the trees in a similar

way to modern monkeys. New fossil finds

from Myanmar and Pakistan affirm that

Asia was probably the starting place for

this group of primates. They eventually

made it into the African continent. And

if we didn't know more about our

planet's geological history, we might

assume they simply migrated there,

climbing from branch to branch over a

vast jungle canopy. But there's a twist.

Africa and Asia weren't always connected

by land. They were separated by the Teis

Seaway, which linked the Atlantic and

Indian oceans. This would have posed a

massive barrier for migrating

anthropoids. Shortly after 40 million

years ago, a slow motion clash of

continents reshaped with this ancient

ocean. Deep beneath our feet, Earth

behaves like a slow lava lamp. Heat from

the core warms the mantle rock, which

rises as buoyant plumes and then cools

and sinks. This creates sluggish

convection currents. These currents drag

the rigid crust we stand on, causing

largecale tectonic shifts. Sometimes a

hot mantle plume reaches upward and

balloons the crust. It was a combination

of these geological events that

connected Africa with Asia. The Afar

plume, for example, lifted plateaus in

northeast Africa. The African and

Arabian tectonic plates drifted north,

driven by the heat rising from the

Earth's mantle. They slammed into the

southern edge of Eurasia. This collision

pushed up mountains in places like

Turkey and Iran. It also welded Arabia

to Africa. More importantly, it created

new land. Volcanic material rose from

the depths, hardening into islands. By

around 20 million years ago, a land mass

called the Gumpreum land bridge formed,

closing the Tethus Seaway and connecting

the continents for good. This changed

ocean circulations in monsoon patterns,

which gradually increased aridity in

some places while enhancing rainfall

elsewhere. A variety of new ecosystems

formed in and around the landbridge from

dense forests to grassy savas. This was

the opportunity our anthropoid ancestors

needed. They first got to Africa using

those early island chains and shallowing

seas. Thank god they did because those

that remained in Asia are believed to

have gone extinct due to a severe

cooling period. Who knows if we'd be

here if it wasn't for those island

hopping primates. Once isolated in

Africa, the immigrant anthropoids

diversified. This is when we see new

world and oldw world monkeys splitting

into different lineages. Today, tiny

traits separate them, including their

nostril orientation and tooth counts.

But the bigger story is about their

geography. The population that would

become New World monkeys mysteriously

made it to South America. The current

hypothesis is that they drifted across

the Atlantic Ocean on a giant natural

raft made largely of vegetation. This is

our most reasonable explanation, but we

don't know for sure. Those that remained

in Africa would become old world monkeys

and apes. Once that landbridge formed 20

million years ago, it allowed for even

larger scale migrations. Tons of Asian

rodents, undulates, and carnivores

poured into Africa for the first time.

In the other direction, an elephant-like

genus known as Gumparreum entered Asia.

The name Gumperum landbridge comes from

these massive mammals. African primates

joined the party, too, and recolonized

Asia using the landbridge. In short,

these massive tectonic events opened

doors for otherwise isolated animals.

What was once a barrier became a gateway

for primates to cross-colonize these

continents and kickstart a new

evolutionary chapter. Asia supplied the

seeds and planted them in Africa. But a

few things still had to happen before we

see humanity sprout from the African

soil. By the measine epoch around 23

million years ago, the primate

experiment intensifies and inches

towards us. Apes burst onto the scene.

Unlike monkeys, apes, including humans,

lack tails. They also have larger

brains, more complex social lives, and

bigger bodies in general. One of the

earliest candidates was proconsul. The

proconsul group consists of as many as

15 different species living mostly in

East Africa around 20 million years ago.

They had a monkeyike body, ape-like

teeth, and a relatively larger brain.

Because of this mix, some researchers

hesitate to call them a true ape. That

said, their main ape trait was their

lack of a tail. This half monkey, half

ape design makes it a good model for a

transitional species. Note how its body

plan continues to build on adaptations

we saw in Purgatorius and the first

primates millions of years earlier. Two

important climate events took place as

our ape lineage was taking shape. First

was a climate optimum around 17 million

years ago. Subtropical forests spread

across Eurasia and Africa as

temperatures significantly increased.

Various apes used these forests to

expand further into Europe and Asia. And

the fossil map fills with odd relatives.

We see swamp apes in Spain, forest apes

in Hungary, island specialists off

Italy, and Asian forms foreshadowing

orangutans. But this roaring ape

expansion came to an end a few million

years later as temperatures began to

plummet. A brutal cooling period at the

end of the Mayene wiped out most

Eurasian apes. The poor Dryopcthecus was

one of these. Dryopitheycus thrived in

Europe between roughly 12 and 9 million

years ago. Fossils show it was about

chimpsized with long arms, flexible

joints, and curved fingers built for

swinging and climbing. Its brain was

comparable to a chimps as well. Its

teeth were very ape-like with sharp

canines and cheek teeth adapted to

chewing fruit. Close examinations of

their tooth enamel suggest they grew

slowly, which is an important trait in

the ape lineage. Just think about how

long it takes a human to mature compared

to other animals. This is essential for

the growth of our big brains and

intelligence. Dryopithecus was

officially an ape. Despite its novel

adaptations, it could not withstand the

drastic climate changes of its time.

This cooling period dried up the lush

European forests. Their habitats

gradually shrunk and they eventually

went extinct. A host of other European

apes followed suit. As a result, really

only Africa and parts of Southeast Asia

remained as refues. The surviving

primates in Africa included lineages

that would give rise to chimps,

gorillas, and eventually hominins. Those

evolving into orangutans and gibbons

were the Asian offshoots. After the

meiosene boom and Eurasian collapse, the

primate story continues to puzzle us. By

7 million years ago, the human lineage

began to emerge. But the gaps at this

critical point are extra frustrating. We

don't have a ton of fossils from this

period, so making connections between

species is very difficult. Hence why we

don't necessarily have a quote unquote

missing link. Nonetheless, the fossils

we do have tell us one thing. Africa was

our Garden of Eden. The Dawn of Humanity

looks more like a garage band than a

polished symphony. It's messy, bold, and

experimental. Like I said, it started

around 7 million years ago when we

separated from our common ancestor with

chimpanzees. While the chimps still

favored the trees and only knuckle

walked while on the ground, our lineage

began to favor the ground. We became

bipeedal, meaning we walk on two feet.

Other apes only do this on occasion, but

we're fully committed. This is what

really sets us apart from the rest of

the primates. It's what makes us

special, and the first fossils with

signs of this trait come from Africa.

This is honestly one of our biggest

clues supporting an African origin for

humanity. Just a heads up, there are

quite a few hominin species that could

be discussed here. So, for the sake of

time, we'll have to pick and choose a

few highlights. The earliest example is

a species called Salanthropus Chidensis.

It shows up in Chad at just about that 7

million-year mark. It would have looked

very similar to a chimp, but this

fossilized skull tells us it wasn't. The

hole at the base of the skull is called

the fammen magnum. It connects the brain

stem to the spinal cord. Insanthropus,

it sits close to the front. This is

unlike other apes whose framan magnum is

further back. It suggests that this

species could stand or walk with a more

vertical posture. Since its fossils are

pretty scarce, whether it was fully

upright is still debated. A million

years later, Auroran tuganensis appears

in Kenya. Its femur tells an even

clearer story. The femoral head, which

would have fit into its pelvis, looks

almost like that of a human. When you

stand upright, your legs bear more

weight and bear it differently. And this

femur is better attuned to that

function. But like silanthropus, Auroran

is known from only a handful of fossils.

So its place on the family tree is

fuzzy. Then comes Artipythecus, also

known as Arty. Arty was found in

Ethiopia and is four 5 million years

old. The skull and pelvis hint at

habitual bipedalism. Some key signs are

its forward frame and magnum, B-shaped

pelvis, and knees that slightly bow

inward. Again, these mostly help

stabilize the weight of the upper body.

Yet, the foot keeps a fiercely divergent

big toe for gripping branches. Think of

Arty as a multi-use vehicle built to

drive on the ground, but still excellent

for off-roading in the trees. Arty was

followed by a large genus of hominins

known as Oralopycus. With so many

different species, we can't cover them

all. They spanned from roughly 4 million

to 1 million years ago, living in East

and South Africa. They all share signs

of habitual bipedality with many of the

same traits as Arty. Take Oralopythecus

apherenis for example. You may know her

as Lucy. In addition to her knees and

hips, she had a spine that was more

adept at supporting an upright posture.

Oralopythecus even left us footprints to

reassure ourselves of their relatively

modern locomotion. They're 3.6 million

years old and come from a site called

Leatoi in Tanzania. The footprints have

stayed preserved in volcanic ash. The

impressions indicate these hominins

walked heel first, transferred their

weight to the ball of their foot, then

pushed off their toes. The tracks also

hint at family life, showing possible

evidence of youngsters following their

parents' footsteps. So, it's pretty

locked in. Oralopythecus was literally

making strides toward modern humans.

Inevitably, the next question is why did

these species start walking on two feet?

For starters, their bodies were kind of

pre-addapted to it in a sense. A body

built for climbing trees is actually

better suited to transitioning to

bipedalism than walking on all fours. It

sounds like a contradiction, but

navigating trees requires a degree of

familiarity with being oriented

vertically. Compare this to something

like a fox whose body is almost always

oriented horizontally. But as the saying

goes, don't fix what ain't broke. If

everything was going fine up in the

trees, these ancient hominins might have

never evolved. There had to have been

some evolutionary incentive to ditch

whatever wasn't working. Numerous

hypotheses have been proposed to explain

this phenomenon. However, the most

compelling idea we have at the moment is

this. There was no single cause. It was

a stack of pressures that pushed some

apes upright and once it worked, it

stuck. In other words, multiple

hypotheses fit together. The initial

drivers were most likely environmental

shifts occurring in Africa. Paleo

environmental work has shown that during

the time of aopythecus and the early

hominins, their environments were

shifting from dense jungles to patchy

woodlands. After exhausting a patch of

food, these hominins would then need to

travel some distance to find another. to

do so. Bipedalism is more efficient than

walking on all fours. Bipeedal walking

uses less energy across long distances

and helps with thermmorreulation. This

goes handinhand with the postural

feeding idea which says apes stood up to

reach and grab food. Think about it.

Before moving on to the next patch, it

would have been helpful to maximize your

caloric input here first. So reaching

for those tough to get fruits before

your travels would have favored an

upright stance. This could be a reason

why many of these hominins still retain

some of their climbing traits to grab

those higher foods. We even see some

modern apes doing this while feeding.

Lastly, the provisioning hypothesis,

which adds the human-like social

pressures, carrying food, infants, or

tools would have been more efficient

once our hands were freed. All of these

factors would have worked in conjunction

to help hominins adapt to the more

patchy forests of Africa. It was this

continent that offered the right stage

for these pressures to play out

repeatedly. Contrast this to orangutans.

Orangutans are a longunning success

story of tree life. Their lineage split

from African apes back in the measine.

They migrated to Southeast Asia's

rainforest and remained there for

millions of years. They evolved into

big, slowmoving apes with very long

arms, hook-like hands, and feet built

for gripping branches. Orangutan anatomy

still favors living in the canopy. Their

rainforest conditions have stayed

relatively stable, so there was a little

selective pressure to adopt a new life

on the ground. No significant pressures,

no new species. Unlike orangutan stable

aroreal story, early hominins were set

on a very different evolutionary path.

These species represent the first

bipeedal walkers in the hominan lineage

and the fossil evidence confirms they

arose in Africa. They are a great proxy

to investigate where we come from. But

we don't have any sufficient evidence

that any of them were our direct

ancestors. So when looking at our own

evolution, we must be more specific. Our

genus, the homo genus, first appeared in

Africa, too. Homohabilis is the oldest

relative in this genus. It lived mainly

in East Africa and its fossils are dated

to shortly after 3 million years ago.

Accompanying this species are some of

the earliest known tools known as old

choppers. They're pretty big and clunky,

but they would have been a gamecher for

scavenging meat and accessing bone

marrow. Earlier tools known as lomequi

choppers were found in Kenya and date to

about 3.3 million years ago. But the

species of human that made them remains

ambiguous. What matters is that newly

freed hands shaped by millions of years

of climbing dexterity were now turning

stone into tools. Following habilis was

Homo erectus. This is where things get a

little trickier. Homo erectus is the

first homminid that would almost feel

human if you saw them today. They were

permanently bipedal. They had longer

legs than arms and their brains were

significantly larger than all prior

species. A seriously important feature

of erectus is that it's the oldest human

species we have evidence of outside of

Africa. It's believed that a combination

of their more advanced aulian tools and

hunting strategies gave them the

advantage to partake in such vast

migrations. By about 1.8 million years

ago, erectus made it to the demoni site

in Georgia, demonstrating they were

already living in western Eurasia. From

roughly the same time, populations show

up in Indonesia. They even persist on

the island of Java for well over a

million years. This wide reach creates

two headaches. First is the possibility

that regional populations evolved

locally. African, Georgian, and Javanese

fossils display differences in skull

shape, brain size, and body size. Some

researchers classify African forms into

Homoaster and keep Asian fossils as

homoerectus. Others lump them together

as a single highly variable species.

Second, early dispersals and long

survival on different continents mean

the fossil record is painted by a broad

brush. It's hard to draw clean lines

between species origins and migrations.

However, the oldest Homoctus fossils

still come from Africa, specifically

around Lake Turkana in Kenya. They date

to between 1.8 and 2 million years ago.

This strongly suggests that the species

first emerged in Africa before spreading

outward. Once on the move, they adapted

to a wide range of environments quickly.

They survived the savas of Africa, the

temperate valleys of the caucus, and the

tropical forests of Southeast Asia. This

flexibility is part of what makes

Homoctus so important. So, in short, it

probably evolved in Africa and migrated

outward early, but its huge range and

local variation muddy any simplified

stories about where we come from or who

we are. So based on the current state of

the archaeological record, hominins and

our homo genus most likely came from

Africa. Time to narrow in on our species

specifically, Homo sapiens. Here things

get even wonkier. The oldest Homo

sapiens fossil consists of skull

fragments discovered in Morocco, dating

to 300,000 years ago. This is yet

another point on the scoreboard for

Africa. What complicates things is that

we weren't the only species of Homo

around at this time. There were so many

human variants that started emerging

around 1 million years ago and after.

These include homo anticcessor, homohyal

bberensis and the famous neanderthalss.

And they've been found all over the old

world. So where do we fit in this mix?

Two competing hypotheses have

historically duped it out. The out of

Africa hypothesis versus multi-reional

evolution. The out of Africa hypothesis

argues that homo sapiens evolved once in

Africa and later spread across the world

largely replacing other archaic humans.

The multi-reional hypothesis argues that

modern humans evolved in various

locations simultaneously from earlier

homoerectus populations and they had

constant gene flow keeping them one

species. But in recent years, DNA and

genetics have helped sharpen the

picture. For example, the greatest

genetic diversity among modern humans is

in Africa. Genetic diversity builds up

over long periods of time as things like

mutations accumulate. So, the fact that

Africans have more variation than

anywhere else means that homo sapiens

have been living and evolving there the

longest. Populations outside of Africa

carry only a subset of that variation,

which makes sense. if small groups

migrated out of Africa later and took

only part of that gene pool with them.

This is supported by additional genetic

evidence indicating that all non-African

people today can trace their genes to

small populations that left the

continent around 50,000 years ago.

Shortly thereafter, all other species of

homo were extinct. Our deeper genetic

diversity in Africa points to the out of

Africa hypothesis. However, ancient

interbreeding with species like

Neanderthalss and Denisovans left traces

in the DNA of non-Africans. So, it

wasn't a pure replacement. There was

some multi-reional mixing between

species, but Homo sapiens came to

dominate. What was it about early Homo

sapiens in Africa that gave them such an

advantage? Why wasn't it the other way

around with species like Neanderthalss

migrating into Africa and replacing Homo

sapiens? The answer lies in a

combination of our genetics, our

sociality, and the ancient African

environments that shape them. New

research paints a continentwide social

web of ancient Homo sapiens. A

pan-African network of people, genes,

and ideas stretches back hundreds of

thousands of years. We see this

archaeologically by the presence of

artifacts that were traded or migrated

with humans over long distances. For

example, ostrich eggshell beads moved

across the continent 50,000 years ago.

200,000 years ago, obsidian for tool

making traveled over 160 km, and

pigments were traded as far back as

320,000 years ago. Even gift exchange

systems among modern Africans echo the

same logic today. Among today's San

hunter gather communities,

anthropologists have observed a

continuing practice of reciprocal

giftgiving known as Zaro. I think I'm

pronouncing that right, which functions

as a long-distance social network. It's

wild to think that such a practice could

be hundreds of thousands of years old.

Furthermore, genetic and archaeological

data show repeated cycles of isolation

and contact. Groups often diverged and

inhabited local places for long

stretches. This would produce cultural

and slight anatomical differences unique

to their respective environments. Then

intermittent contact between groups let

those separate innovations recombine.

Think of what breeds innovation

nowadays. Music is a good example.

Regional music can be seen as

semiisolated populations. Blues grew out

of African traditions and work songs.

Country sprung from rural folk and

ballads. Gospel and R&B grew from church

and urban life. When these genres met at

record shops, radio stations, and

dances, they mixed. Artists borrowed

riffs and other ideas and invented

something new, rock and roll. This is

the same mechanism that occurred in

ancient Africa for thousands of years.

Studies looking at huntergatherer

networks confirm that parallel invention

in semiisolated groups followed by

recombination speeds up the rise of

complex technologies better than a

single fully connected population could.

The same is almost certainly true for

genetics. Genetic diversity is a

safeguard against extinction. A wider

gene pool means more opportunity for

positive mutations. This pan-African

network would have promoted such

variation while keeping Homo sapiens

integrated as a species. The result is

mosaic evolution. Modern human biology

and culture emerged from many

interacting populations, not one single

tribe. We owe our adaptability to that

variation. And it's that adaptability

that allowed us to outpace other human

species. So our story is long, but the

preponderance of evidence supports an

African origin of humanity. The fossils,

stone tools, and genetics all converge

on this continent, and the reasons for

this are many. It started with the

earliest primates adapting to a complex

prehistoric world with new adaptations.

Then massive tectonic events allowed

their descendants to eventually migrate

into Africa, keeping them safe from the

Eurasian extinctions. The dramatic

climate shifts of the African continent

provided the right pressures for

ancestral apes to start walking on the

ground. Its wide range of environments

then prompted homo sapiens to develop

immense variation and become the most

adaptable species on the planet. But

science is built on challenging the

status quo. We must keep our minds open

and never settle for the current

paradigm. Paradigms are always shifting

and with each turn we get a little

closer to the truth. So what if we

didn't evolve in Africa? What are the

best arguments against an African

origin? First was one mascine ape living

in Europe that makes us reconsider some

things. The headline making ape is

called Denuvius. It lived in Germany

around 11 million years ago. Its

skeletal remains gave researchers a rare

detailed glimpse of how some ancient

apes moved about. It had long forlims

and hind limbs, mobile wrists and

ankles, and joint shapes suggesting the

animal could both climb and adopt an

upright posture on its hind legs.

Researchers have called this form of

locomotion extended limb clamoring. They

say that Denuvius combines the

adaptations of bipeds and suspensory

apes and provides a model for the common

ancestor of great apes and humans. Why

does that matter? Because it pushes back

the possible origins of upright body

mechanics well before the African

hominin story. While it wasn't totally

bipeedal, its posture makes it a

provocative candidate for the ancestor

to the homminin lineage. An alternative

idea could be that Denuvius's

descendants gave rise to hominins in

Europe who then migrated to Africa. That

said, there's a long geographic and

temporal gap before the first hominins

appear. More fossils within that gap

would be needed to support this. Another

challenge deals with Homo erectus

specifically. We touched on it before,

but it's plausible that Homoctus gave

rise to Homo sapiens somewhere

throughout the Eurasian land mass.

Having lived there for over a million

years, there was plenty of time for

evolutionary changes to build on this

already adaptable species. Also, we can

extend our logic for the rise of homo

sapiens in Africa to this species. If

inhabiting a wide environmental range

helped African homo sapiens diversify

and innovate, why would it not do the

same for Eurasian homoerectus? It's not

impossible that this happened first,

then those Eurasian populations migrated

back into Africa and were evolutionarily

refined into homo sapiens. Even early

scientists such as Ernst Heckle

speculated this when observing the Java

man fossils. They believe that this

Indonesian homoerectus represented an

intermediate form between orangutans or

gibbons and humans. Genetics tells us we

are more closely related to African

chimps than these Asian primates. So

that's off the table. This doesn't

disprove that later homo erectus living

in Asia could have contributed to our

lineage more than we know. Lastly, the

homo sapiens fossils we find outside of

Africa keep getting older. Two sites are

especially important. Misleia cave in

Israel and Apademma cave in Greece. In

Misla Cave, a single jawbone was found

intact in a middle paleolithic layer. It

matches modern human anatomy with its

U-shaped dental arcade and cheekbone

placement near the first mer. It also

sat beside a full Lava toolkit

resembling African technology of the

time. Multiple dating methods placed

this fossil between 194,000 and 177,000

years ago. Two skull fragments were

found in Epidemma cave. Digital

reconstruction showed that one has a

rounded modern human rear skull and

dates to 210,000 years ago. This makes

it the oldest known Homo sapiens fossil

outside of Africa. Interestingly, the

other skull is that of a Neanderthal and

dates to around 170,000 years ago. The

pair of skulls tells a story of early

Homo sapiens reaching this part of the

world before Neanderthalss. Neither site

is as old as the fossil from Morocco,

but they give us a reason to continue

our search for early Homo sapiens

outside of Africa. But now I want to

know what you think. I have two

questions for you. First, what do you

think of the evidence? Are you on team

Africa or team Eurasia? Second, I want

you to speculate what humanity would

look like today if homo sapiens evolved

elsewhere. How different would modern

civilization look had we began somewhere

like Australia? Or if the new world

monkeys of South America evolved into

humans? Let me know what you think in

the comments. Since you made it to the

end, you must be a lover of history and

prehistory like myself. So, I have two

more things you'll probably like. Check

out my free newsletter in the video

description. Subscribe with your email

and you'll get updates on the channel,

archaeology related news, and even music

suggestions. And if you still want more,

watch this video about ancient North

America. Thanks for watching, and I'll

see you in the next one.