Becoming Human

Three weeks ago, in a brief NEWS article, we referred to an account in the journal  Nature concerning the discovery in Morocco of fossil remains attributed to Homo sapiens and dated to 315,000 years ago. We promised more news when available.

Announced yesterday in the journal Nature, fossils found in Morocco have been determined to be Homo sapiens and dated to 315,000 years ago. Until now, scientists understood the earliest evidence of our species came from East Africa and was no older then 200,000 years.

The earliest date for human occupation of the Western Hemisphere has a long history of controversy. The finding of distinctive Clovis points in New Mexico in 1931, together with other evidence and the endorsement of Louis Leakey, and dated to around 12-13,000 years ago, was widely accepted.

At last week’s AAPA meeting in New Orleans, a fresh analysis of the 2010 discovery named Au. sediba caused paleoanthropologist William H. Kimbel to conclude this fossil was not ancestral to the genus Homo. Kimbel is Director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. AAPA is the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.