Humanity may be 50% older!
The search for the origin of man is a long struggle of puzzling, where the first puzzle is to find the pieces of the other puzzles.
The current puzzle looks like that: There were several families of pre-humans and one of them evolved to homo sapiens, an intelligent, tool using species that survived because of their better brain. This homo sapiens appeared about 200'000 years the the center of Africa.
But new fossils found in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, are making those homo sapiens look like youngsters. The fossils found, including skulls, show a form that is nearly identical as that of a known homo sapiens, but in details show more ancient curves, like a smaller brain cavity.
Prof Jean-Jacques Hublin, of the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told me that the discovery would "rewrite the textbooks" about our emergence as a species.
The fossils could also mean that homo sapiens did not appear suddenly in one spot, but evolved parallel all over Afrika, maybe even outside, like in today's Israel.
But be careful if you call them homo sapiens. The sapiens is characterized by advanced tool making and cognitive abilities. Those people found now likely did not possess these traits. But even if scientists put them out of the sapiens line, they would be the missing link between older forms and our direct ancestors.
50% older, but we arent 50% wiser, there must be a lesson in there somewhere ;)
I may have missed it, but I didn't notice the age of the site on your post. I went to the BBC link you provided and it seems that humanity may be as old as 400,000 years.
Thanks!
Oh, I got the wrong link at BBC, there was the nature article too.
Now its corrected and the age is just at the start.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40194150
Thank you for your comment @valued-customer !
So they were physically very similar to us, but not mentally? Quite fascinating.
First is of course we can't know for sure.
Second everything is relative. Could they plan ahead? Likely. Could they invent e=mc²? Unlikely.
Great, now I can retire.
Very interesting post man, thanks for sharing! Have you heard of Graham Hancock? He's an author who specialises in these kinds of theories. He spoke about how humanity may be far older than we think on the Joe Rogan podcast. He spoke about it in the context of Egyptology which I think makes it all the more interesting. You should be able to find it with a quick youtube search, I highly recommend his work.
I think I have seen something from him a few years back.