Showing posts sorted by date for query NEANDERTHALS. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Tuesday, January 13, 2026

Fossils discovered in Morocco shed light on our African roots

Paris (AFP) – Where did our species first emerge? Fossils discovered in Morocco dating back more than 773,000 years bolster the theory that Homo sapiens originally appeared in Africa, scientists said in a study this week.

Issued on: 11/01/2026 - RFI

New fossil evidence from North Africa strengthens the case that Homo Sapiens first emerged on the African continent. © PIERRE ANDRIEU / AFP/File

The oldest Homo sapien fossils, dating from over 300,000 years ago, were found at the Jebel Irhoud northwest of Marrakesh.

Our cousins the Neanderthals mostly lived in Europe, while more recent additions to the family, the Denisovans, roamed Asia.

This has prompted an enduring mystery: who was the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens and our cousins, before the family tree split off into different branches?

This divergence is thought to have occurred between 550,000 and 750,000 years ago.

Until now, the main hominin fossils from around that time period were found in Atapuerca, Spain.

They belonged to a species dubbed "Homo antecessor", dated back around 800,000 years ago, and had features that were a mix of the older Homo erectus and those more similar to Homo sapiens and our cousins.

This sparked a contentious debate about whether our species originally emerged outside of Africa, before returning there.

There was "a gap in the fossil record of Africa", French paleoanthropologist and lead study author Jean-Jacques Hublin told the French news agency AFP.

The research published in the journal Nature fills that gap by finally establishing a firm date for fossils discovered in 1969 inside a cave in the Moroccan city of Casablanca.

Over three decades, a French-Moroccan team unearthed hominin vertebrae, teeth and fragments of jaws that have puzzled researchers.

A slender lower jawbone discovered in 2008 proved particularly perplexing.

The 773,000-year-old lower jawbone found in Morocco © Hamza Mehimdate / PROGRAMME PREHISTOIRE DE CASABLANCA/AFP

"Hominins who lived half a million or a million years generally didn't have small jawbones," Hublin said.

"We could clearly see that it was something unusual – and we wondered how old it could be."

However numerous efforts to determine its age fell short.

When Earth's magnetic field flipped

Then the researchers tried a different approach.

Every once in a while, Earth's magnetic field flips. Until the last reversal – 773,000 years ago – our planet's magnetic north pole was near the geographic south pole.

Evidence of this change is still preserved in rocks around the world.

The Casablanca fossils were discovered in layers corresponding to the time of this reversal, allowing scientists to establish a "very, very precise" date, Hublin said.

This discovery eliminates the "absence of plausible ancestors" for Homo sapiens in Africa, he added.

Antonio Rosas, a researcher at Spain's National Museum of Natural Sciences, said it adds "weight to the increasingly prevalent idea" that the origins of both our species and the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals/Denisovans lie in Africa.

"This work also suggests that the evolutionary divergence of the Homo sapiens lineage might have started earlier than is conventionally assumed," Rosas, who was not involved in the research, commented in Nature.

Like Homo antecessor, the Casablanca fossils have a mix of characteristics from Homo erectus, ourselves and our cousins.

But while clearly closely related, the Moroccan and Spanish fossils are not the same, which Hublin said is a sign of "populations that are in the process of separating and differentiating".

The Middle East is considered to have been the main migration route for hominins out of Africa, however sinking sea levels at certain times could have allowed crossings between Tunisia and Sicily – or across the Strait of Gibraltar.

So the Casablanca fossils are "another piece of evidence to support the hypothesis of possible exchanges" between North Africa and southwestern Europe, Hublin said.

Thursday, January 08, 2026

The Bright Side: Fossils found in Morocco shed light on humanity's African roots

Fossils of archaic humans found in a cave in Casablanca are helping to fill a gap in the history of humanity's evolutionary lineage, with researchers saying they may represent a population that existed shortly before Homo sapiens populated Africa.

Issued on: 07/01/2026
By: FRANCE 24

The 773,000-year-old mandible ThI-GH-10717 from Thomas Quarry in Morocco. © Hamza Mehimdate, Programme préhistoire de Casablanca via AFP

Fossilised bones and teeth dating to 773,000 years ago, unearthed in a Moroccan cave, ⁠are providing a deeper understanding of the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa, representing the remains of archaic humans who may have been close ancestors of our species.

Researchers said the fossils – lower jawbones of two adults and a toddler, as well as teeth, a thigh bone and some vertebrae – were unearthed in a cave called Grotte à Hominidés at a site in the city of Casablanca. The cave appears to have been a den for predators, with the thigh bone bearing bite marks ‍suggesting the person may have been hunted or scavenged by a hyena.

The researchers said the most appropriate interpretation is that these fossils represent an evolved form of the archaic human species Homo erectus, which first appeared about 1.9 million years ago in Africa and later spread to Eurasia.

The bones and teeth display a mix of primitive and more modern human characteristics. They fill a gap in the African fossil record of species in the human evolutionary lineage – called hominins – from about one million to 600,000 years ago.

According to the researchers, the fossils may represent an African population that existed shortly before the evolutionary split of the lineages that led to Homo sapiens in Africa and two closely related hominins – the Neanderthals and Denisovans – that inhabited Eurasia.

"I would be cautious about labeling them as 'the last common ancestor', but they are plausibly close to the populations from which later African – Homo sapiens – and Eurasian – Neanderthal and Denisovan – lineages ultimately emerged," said paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin of Collège de France in Paris and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, lead author of the study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

"The fossils show a mosaic of primitive and derived ‍traits, consistent with evolutionary differentiation already underway during this period, while reinforcing a deep African ancestry for the Homo sapiens lineage," Hublin added.

The oldest-known fossils of Homo sapiens, dating to about 315,000 years ago, were also found in Morocco, at an archaeological site called Jebel Irhoud.

Knowing the age of the Grotte à Hominidés fossils, based on the magnetic signature of cave sediments surrounding the fossils, helped the researchers assess how this population fit into the human family tree.

"Establishing the age was essential to the interpretation of this material," Hublin added.

The fossils were buried by fine sediments ‌over time and the cave entrance was sealed by a dune, enabling exceptional preservation of the remains. Hundreds of stone artefacts and thousands of animal bones were also discovered in the cave.

The Grotte à Hominidés human fossils are roughly the same age as fossils from a site ‍called Gran Dolina near Atapuerca in Spain that represent an archaic human species called Homo antecessor. In fact, these fossils share some traits.

"The similarities between Gran Dolina and Grotte à Hominidés are intriguing and may reflect intermittent connections across the Strait of Gibraltar, a hypothesis that deserves further investigation," Hublin said.

Hominins from this time possessed body proportions similar to ours but with smaller brains.

The jawbone, or mandible, of the Grotte à Hominidés child, who was about 1-1/2 years old, was complete, while the mandible of one of the adults was nearly complete and the other was partial. One of the adult jawbones was built more robustly than the other, suggesting one was from a man and the other from a woman. The largest of the fossils was the adult thigh bone, ‍or femur.

These people were capable of hunting prey but roamed a dangerous landscape and sometimes found themselves as the hunted, with large carnivores, including big cats and hyenas, on the prowl.

"Only the femur displays clear evidence ‌of carnivore modification – gnawing and tooth marks – indicating consumption by a large carnivore. However, the cave appears primarily to have been a carnivore den that hominins used only occasionally. The absence of tooth marks on the mandibles does not imply that other parts of the bodies were not consumed by hyenas or other carnivores," Hublin said.

(FRANCE 24 with Reuters)

Saturday, December 13, 2025

Human use of controlled fire dates back 400,000 years, new study suggests

Scientists in Britain say new evidence suggests ancient humans may have mastered the art of making fire far earlier than previously believed.

Issued on: 12/12/2025 - RFI

A man dressed as a Neanderthal holds a torch up to a rock in a rock in Chianale, in the Italian Alps, in August 2019. © AFP - MARCO BERTORELLO

New research suggests deliberate fire-setting took place in what is now eastern England around 400,000 years ago, pushing back the earliest known date for controlled fire-making by roughly 350,000 years.

Until now, the oldest confirmed evidence had come from Neanderthal sites in northern France dating to about 50,000 years ago.

The findings, published in the journal Nature, centre on the Paleolithic site of Barnham in Suffolk, which has been excavated intermittently for decades.

A team led by the British Museum identified a distinctive patch of baked clay, flint hand axes fractured by extreme heat, and two fragments of iron pyrite – a mineral that produces sparks when struck against flint.

Together, the clues point to deliberate, controlled fire-making rather than a chance blaze.

A hearth, not a wildfire

Researchers spent four years subjecting the site to detailed analysis to rule out the possibility of natural wildfires. Geochemical tests showed temperatures had exceeded 700 degrees Celsius, with signs of repeated burning in the same location over time.

That pattern, the scientists say, is far more consistent with a constructed hearth than a lightning strike.

Rob Davis, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the British Museum, said the combination of high temperatures, controlled burning and pyrite fragments together show “how they were actually making the fire and the fact they were making it”.

Crucially, iron pyrite does not occur naturally at Barnham. Its presence suggests the people who lived there deliberately collected it, understanding its properties and how it could be used to ignite tinder.

Such evidence is rare, as deliberate fire-making is seldom preserved in the archaeological record: ash disperses easily, charcoal decays and heat-altered sediments are often eroded over time.

At Barnham, however, the burned deposits were sealed within ancient pond sediments, allowing scientists to reconstruct how early humans used the site.

Nick Ashton, curator of Paleolithic collections at the British Museum, called it “the most exciting discovery of my long 40-year career”.

Evolutionary progress

Fire had significant consequences for early populations, allowing them to survive colder climates, deter predators and cook food.

Chris Stringer, a human evolution specialist at the UK's Natural History Museum, said fossils from Britain and Spain suggest the inhabitants of Barnham were early Neanderthals. Their cranial features and DNA, he noted, point to growing cognitive and technological sophistication at this stage in human evolution.

Archaeologists say the Barnham site fits into a wider pattern seen across Britain and continental Europe between 500,000 and 400,000 years ago.

During this period, brain size in early humans began to approach modern levels, while evidence for increasingly complex behaviour becomes more visible in the archaeological record.

(with newswires)

Wednesday, December 10, 2025

Biobanking opens new windows into human evolution

Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics

Nijmegen, 10 December 2025 - More than a decade after the first Neanderthal genome was sequenced, scientists are still working to understand how human-specific DNA changes shaped our evolution. A new study by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, published in Science Advances, offers an innovative approach: by scanning DNA of hundreds of thousands of people in a population biobank, researchers can identify individuals who carry the very rare archaic versions of these genetic changes, making it possible to directly observe their real-world effects in living humans.

It’s just over a decade since scientists first reported successfully sequencing the virtually complete genome of a Neanderthal, a landmark in ancient DNA research. Although present-day humans are not the direct descendants of Neanderthals, we shared a common ancestor with them roughly 600,000 years ago. By comparing modern genomes to those of our extinct Neanderthal cousins, it became possible to assemble a catalogue of human-specific DNA changes that arose uniquely on the branch that led to us. But we still know little about the roles these DNA changes played (if any) in our evolutionary story.

An innovative source: Population databases like UK Biobank

In prior research, scientists were largely limited to testing the impacts of human-specific genomic changes by either “humanizing” animal models or introducing archaic (i.e. ancestral) DNA variants into human tissue grown in the laboratory. The authors of the new study reasoned that complementary insights might instead come from an innovative source – population biobanks.

“Research suggests that genetic variants with relatively recent origins in human evolution could be especially relevant for health outcomes, so the availability of massive collections of data from hundreds of thousands of human participants gives exciting new opportunities” says Barbara Molz, one of the lead authors of the study. “By searching biobanks like these for very rare cases where individuals happen to carry archaic versions of human-specific DNA changes, we get the chance to study their potential real-world effects directly in living people.”

Human-specific changes not as universal as thought

To demonstrate promise and pitfalls of this new strategy, Molz and co-authors targeted one class of DNA changes that has received particular attention in earlier research on human evolution – variants that alter protein structure. Proteins make up much of the molecular machinery of cells, with a wide array of roles in the development and functioning of our tissues and organs. The team focused on just the set of human-specific evolutionary changes which affect protein coding and which were so far thought to be unvarying (“fixed”) in all modern humans.

On thoroughly scanning DNA sequences of >450,000 people in UK Biobank, a population resource of healthy adults from the United Kingdom, the researchers found that for many supposedly fixed evolutionary changes in protein coding (17 out of 37 that could be tested), there were at least a few living individuals with an archaic version of the gene, matching the status of our common ancestor with Neanderthals. They zeroed in on one of the variants with the largest number of carriers, a variant in SSH2 – a gene which has been linked to development of brain cells, among other functions. Investigating a range of health, psychiatric, and cognitive traits in 19 unrelated individuals with archaic SSH2, they found no obvious consequences of carrying this ancient variant.

Large lab effects may not match real-world outcomes

The researchers next investigated another variant of special interest, affecting a gene called TKTL1. Big differences between impacts of human and archaic versions of TKTL1 were previously shown in experiments with animal models, gene-edited brain organoids, and gene knockouts in human foetal brain tissue. Those experiments suggested a key role for TKTL1 in our evolution, in which the human-specific change drove increased generation of neurons in frontal brain regions, with potential consequences for human cognition and behaviour.

However, when Molz and colleagues searched UK Biobank, they found there were 62 people carrying the archaic version of TKTL1. Since TKTL1 lies on the X chromosome, the males among these (16 individuals) only have the archaic variant; they completely lack a human-specific version. A subset of people in UK Biobank had undergone research-based neuroimaging, allowing the researchers to look for effects of carrying the archaic version of TKTL1 on structure of the frontal lobes of the brain. But no extreme differences were detected, even in the males. And a substantial proportion of carriers had a college/university degree, arguing against a major impact on cognitive function. The results indicate that the sometimes dramatic effects seen in lab-based experiments on evolutionary variants may not be a guide to their real-world impacts in living human beings.

Challenges and recommendations for the future

“The findings cast further doubt on the idea that distinct features of Homo sapiens might be explained by any singular genomic change with large effects on brain and behaviour,” says Simon Fisher, senior author of the new study. “Overall, this work shows how biobanking efforts can give important insights not only into health and disease, but at the same time may also help illuminate deep questions about our evolutionary origins.”

Still, the authors emphasize that major challenges remain, and they offer recommendations for how to overcome these moving forward. For example, the rarity of individuals who carry archaic variants limits sample sizes, making it difficult to exclude more moderate effects. And many population biobanks lack information about traits of particular evolutionary interest, such as language skills. In future work, there is a need also to broaden ancestral diversity in biobanking efforts, and to develop methods that can better tease apart how multiple evolutionary changes interact to shape human biology.

The research paper titled “Evaluating the effects of archaic protein-altering variants in living human adults” will be available in Science Advances after the embargo lifts and can https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ads5703 (this link won’t be active until the embargo lifts). More information, including a copy of the paper, can be found online at the Science Advances press package at https://www.eurekalert.org/press/vancepak/

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ads5703

Media contact:

Anniek Corporaal
Head of Communications
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
anniek.corporaal@mpi.nl
www.mpi.nl

Authors for general media enquiries:

Barbara Molz, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Barbara.Molz@mpi.nl

Simon Fisher, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Simon.Fisher@mpi.nl

Independent experts (not co-authors) who might comment on the work:

Cedric Boeckx (University of Barcelona), Cedric.Boeckx@ub.edu

Alex Pollen (University of California, San Francisco), Alex.Pollen@ucsf.edu

Madeline Lancaster (University of Cambridge), mlancast@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk

Wolfgang Enard (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich), enard@biologie.uni-muenchen.de

About UK Biobank
UK Biobank is the world’s most comprehensive source of biomedical data available for health research in the public interest. Over the past 15 years we have collected biological, health and lifestyle information from 500,000 UK volunteers. The dataset is continuously growing, with additions including the world’s largest set of whole genome sequencing data, imaging data from 100,000 participants and a first-of-its kind set of protein biomarkers from 54,000 participants. Since 2012, scientists from universities, charities, companies and governments across the world can apply to use the data to advance modern medicine and drive the discovery of new preventions, treatments and cures. Over 22,000 researchers, based in more than 60 countries, are using UK Biobank data, and more than 18,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers have been published as a result. The data are de-identified and stored on our secure cloud-based platform. UK Biobank is a registered charity and was established by Wellcome and the Medical Research Council in 2003. For more information, click here.

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.ads5703

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Evaluating the effects of archaic protein-altering variants in living human adults

Article Publication Date

10-Dec-2025

Wednesday, December 03, 2025

Becoming human in southern Africa: What ancient hunter-gatherer genomes reveal

University of Johannesburg

Some of the earliest Homo sapiens genetic ancestry traced back to Southern African hunter-gatherers — image:
Mandible of a hunter-gatherer woman who lived 7900 years ago at Matjes River Rockshelter in the Western Cape, South Africa, for whom a genome was reconstructed.
view more
Credit: Photo by Helena Malmström.

In one of the largest African hunter-gatherer ancient-DNA studies to date, population geneticists from Uppsala University in Sweden, and a cognitive archaeologist from the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, analysed the DNA of 28 people who lived in southern Africa between 1200 and just a few hundred years ago. It contributes further evidence that southern African hunter-gatherers were some of the earliest human groups with a unique Homo sapiens genetic ancestry tracing back to about 300 000 years ago.

This could be done by peering behind the veil of recent migrations, providing a direct window into the region’s population history before large-scale movements that reshaped the continent's genetic landscape.

Some sapiens-specific adaptations from southern Africa

They found 490 modern human or Homo sapiens specific genetic variants in the ancient southern African hunter-gatherers. Amongst these, immune-system related genes and genes related to kidney function were prevalent.

“When we examine all human genetic variation and look for evolutionary changes on the Homo sapiens lineage, we surprisingly find adaptations of kidney-functions as one of the most dramatic changes. This adaptation may be related to human’s specific water-retention and body-cooling system, which give us special endurance”, says population geneticist Mattias Jakobsson.

Three variants – not specific to all humans, but to the ancient southern Africans – were also located in genes associated with UV-light protection, skin-diseases, and/or skin-pigmentation. Different from the rainforests of central Africa, southern African’s more open ecologies with little natural shade, likely made it important for human foragers to develop UV-light protection genetically.

Most genes have many different functions, and akin to immunity and UV-light protection traits, some behavioural and cognitive traits are also largely heritable. It is therefore noteworthy that more than 40% of the Homo sapiens-specific genetic variants found in the ancient southern African hunter-gatherers are also associated with neurons for brain growth and cognitive traits, or the way that human brains process information today.

Out of southern Africa

Southern Africa may have been an ecological refuge for humans since a cold phase almost 200 000 years ago. Here hunter-gatherers thrived, adapting to a diverse landscape rich in plant and animal resources.

It seems that these southern hunter-gatherers did not mix again with other Africans until after 1400 years ago. By that time, the DNA from eastern African pastoralists, and western African farmers became apparent in southern African populations.

The results from this new study differ from previous linguistic, archaeological, and some early genetic studies, that saw contemporary southern African Khoe and San as the descendants of a once-widespread population that extended across much of southern, eastern, and northeastern Africa.

Instead, it shows that some genetic adaptations for becoming human in Africa were unique to southern African hunter-gatherers who lived in a relatively large, stable population for many millennia south of the Limpopo River.

After about 100-70 000 years ago, small groups of southern African hunter-gatherers may have wandered northwards, carrying several of their genetic signatures and perhaps also techno-behaviours with them.

For Stone Age and cognitive archaeologist from the University of Johannesburg, Marlize Lombard, “this is a meaningful outcome, suggesting that the complex thinking and techno-behaviours such as making compound adhesives or bowhunting, observed in the southern African archaeological record from about 100 000 years ago originated locally, probably trickling northward with the genes of local hunter-gatherers from about 70 000 years ago”.

Are the descendants of ancient hunter-gatherers still among us?

From the Limpopo Province in the north to the south coast of the Western Cape, and from Ballito Bay in KwaZulu-Natal to Augrabies in the Northern Cape, these ancient people almost all shared genetic markers (such as the mitochondrial L0d haplogroup) that are inherited from a single maternal ancestor.

These markers are still found in sub-Saharan Africa, mostly in San or Bushman people such as the Ju/’hoan in Namibia and Botswana, and the Karretjie Mense of South Africa. To a lesser extent the markers are also present in the Coloured population of South Africa, as well as in some Afrikaans speaking south Africans of European descent (mostly French and Dutch), who started to live in the Cape during the 17th century.

Many of the people currently living in South Africa are therefore the descendants of the original hunter-gatherer population to a greater or lesser degree.

Early population history

What excites co-author, Carina Schlebush, most: “is that these genomes provide an unadmixed view of early southern African population history. With increasing numbers of high-coverage ancient genomes, we are now approaching true population-level insights. This gives us a much clearer foundation for understanding how modern humans evolved across Africa”.

Researchers do not yet understand everything that contributed to becoming human in southern Africa, or elsewhere.

The genomes of ancient southern African hunter-gatherers as one of the earliest Homo sapiens groups to split from a common ancestor, however, has a lot to offer. It shows, amongst other things, that genetic variation may still be hidden in other ancient African forager groups, as well as indigenous peoples from elsewhere on the globe for whom there are little available genetic data. Such data is important for advancing our understanding of human evolution.

For lead-author Mattias Jakobsson: “These ancient genomes tell us that southern Africa played a key role in the human journey, perhaps ‘the’ key role”.

###

Notes to Editors

For email questions about this research, please contact Prof Marlize Lombard on Wed 3 Dec or Thurs 4 Dec at mlombard@uj.ac.za. News release written by Prof Marlize Lombard.

Funding

This project was funded by grants from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation (to Mattias Jakobsson and to Carina Schlebush), the Swedish Research council (grant 2022-04642 to Mattias Jakobsson, grant 2023-02944 to Carina Schlebush) and South African National Research Foundation (African Origins Platform grant 98815 to Marlize Lombard).

Acknowledgements

Sequencing was performed at the SciLifeLab SNP&SEQ Technology Platform in Uppsala and the computations and data handling were enabled by resources provided by the National Academic Infrastructure for Supercomputing in Sweden (NAISS) at UPPMAX.

Sampling permits were obtained from the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA). We thank the staff at Bloemfontein Museum, the Florisbad Research Station and the School of Anatomical Sciences and Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand for facilitating work with the collections; the members of the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA) and the South African San Council for their support and facilitating fieldwork for the collections that involved modern-day Khoe-San groups published previously, also used in this study. We thank our brilliant and long-term collaborator and co-author J. Brink who sadly passed away during the course of this project.

300,000-year old Homo sapiens genetic ancestry traced back to Southern African hunter-gatherers

Mandible of a hunter-gatherer woman who lived 7900 years ago at Matjes River Rockshelter in the Western Cape, South Africa, for whom a genome was reconstructed.
Credit
Photo by Helena Malmström.