THE AFRICAN CRADLES OF HUMAN ORIGIN

Scientists are sure that Homo sapiens first evolved in Africa, and we know that every person alive today can trace their genetic ancestry to there (Campbell & Tishkoff, 2010). There is a decades-old origin story for our species, in which we descended from a group of hominids who lived in East Africa around 200,000 years ago (Grine, 2012). However, others have championed a southern birthplace (Grine, 2012). In either case, the narrative always begins in one spot. Yes, we evolved from ancestral hominids in Africa, but we did it in a complicated fashion—one that involves the entire continent (Campbell & Tishkoff, 2010). Those ancestral hominids, probably Homo heidelbergensis, slowly accumulated the characteristic features of our species—the rounded skull, small face, prominent chin, advanced tools, and sophisticated culture (Grine, 2012). From that early cradle, we then spread throughout Africa, and eventually the world (Campbell & Tishkoff, 2010).

Fossils from all over Africa have modern and ancient traits in varied combinations, including the 260,000-year-old Florisbad skull from South Africa; the 315,000-year-old bones Moroccan cave called Jebel Irhoud; the 195,000-year-old remains from Omo Kibish in Ethiopia; and the 160,000-year-old Herto skull, also from Ethiopia (Grine, 2012). Remains of earliest Homo and Paranthropus have been recovered from two contemporaneous sites (Uraha and Malema) in the "Hominid Corridor" in northern Malawi (Stynder et al., 2016). Faunal dating suggests an age of 2.5 – 2.3 Ma for both hominids (Stynder et al., 2016). The Hominid taxa present in the Malawi Rift, Homo rudolfensis and Paranthropus boisei, both represent eastern African endemic elements originating from the eastern African australopithecine stem group (Stynder et al., 2016).

New research has shown that ancestral hominins actually made stone artefacts and animal bones bearing marks of cutting by stone tools, with an estimated chronology of 2.4 and 1.9 million years, respectively, found at two levels at the sites of Ain Boucherit (within the Ain Hanech study area) in Algeria (Braun et al., 2019). A powdery white layer blankets the desiccated landscape of Botswana’s Makgadikgadi pans, one of the world's largest salt flats which would have been an appealing place for early humans to call home (Bousman, 1998). However, a new study argues that this oasis, known as the Makgadikgadi–Okavango wetland, was not just any home, but the ancestral “homeland” for all modern humans today (Bousman, 1998). These remains shows that our ancestors ventured into all corners of Africa changing the earlier view that East Africa was the cradle of Humankind (Grine, 2012). Actually, the whole of Africa was the cradle of humankind (Campbell & Tishkoff, 2010).

References

Grine, F. E. (2012). Observations on Middle Stone Age human teeth from Klasies River Main Site, South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution, 63(6), 750-758.

Stynder, D. D., Moggi-Cecchi, J., & Berger, L. R. (2016). Stable isotope dietary reconstructions of herbivore enamel reveal heterogeneous savanna ecosystems in the Plio-Pleistocene Malawi Rift. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 441, 633-644.

Campbell, M. C., & Tishkoff, S. A. (2010). The evolution of human genetic and phenotypic variation in Africa. Current Biology, 20(3), R166-R173.

Braun, D. R., Aldeias, V., Archer, W., Armitage, S. J., & Bicho, N. (2019). Early hominin stone tool use and its implications for the origins of human cognition. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 3(1), 102-113.

Bousman, C. B. (1998). The archaeological implications of a dry climate in the Makgadikgadi Pans, Botswana. African Archaeological Review, 15(2), 137-155.

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