We All Are African

Skulls found in Ethiopia clues to our origin
Berkeley professor says 160,000-year-old remains lend weight to humans' roots in Africa

By William Brand, Staff Writer, Oakland Tribune
(c) 2003 Oakland Tribune ANG Newspapers June 12, 2003

BERKELEY -- An international team of scientists says the three fossilized skulls they found on the barren shores of an ancient Ethiopian lake are 160,000 to 154,000 years old, the earliest human remains ever discovered.
The skulls of two adults and a child -- found in sediment containing many stone tools and fossils of hippopotamus bones with cut marks -- may likely be near ancestors of a primeval but very human Adam and Eve who roamed the lush shoreline of the lake and nearby hills and savanna, slaying hippos and crocodiles for meat.

The discovery gives new strength to the belief all humankind came from Africa. It also strongly supports DNA studies by geneticists the common ancestors of all modern humans lived in Africa 100,000 to200,000 years ago, said University of California, Berkeley, paleoanthropologist Tim White, co-leader of the discovery team.


The results were reported Wednesday in the science journal Nature by White and his co-leaders, Berhane Asfaw of Rift Valley Research Service in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Giday WoldeGabriel of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Until now, the earliest fossils with enough skull and face to be determined to be human were about 100,000 years old and found at separate sites in Israel and northern Africa.

Other human fossils, as old as 130,000 years, have been found in Africa but either are not so precisely dated or are less complete, White said.

"This discovery means our roots are African," said White, who has combed the searing, barren deserts of Ethiopia since 1981.

"All people, every one of us living today, is ultimately African," White said.

The earliest fossils determined to be human outside Africa are much younger, although a 1.7 million-year-old skull of a hominid -- an upright species predating humanity -- was found last year in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Scientists now believe there were many migrations of pre-human hominids out of Africa and possibly even human migrations.

But genetic evidence indicates all humans are descended from the migration that succeeded about 60,000 years ago.

Stanford geneticist Marcus Feldman said the discovery agrees with his own recent study of DNA fragments tracing the migration of the first humans out of Africa about 70,000 years ago. The study by Feldman and geneticists at the Russian Academy of Science estimated there were fewer than 2,000 humans at the time of the migration.

The discovery precisely matches predictions a decade ago by biologists using genes to chart human evolution that suggested a genetic "Eve" lived in Africa and was the ancestor of all living humans.

Experts in early humans called the discoveries remarkable.

"This adds substantially to the evidence that humans evolved in Africa, not in Europe as some people think," said Stanford paleoanthropologist Richard Klein, an expert in the origins of humanity. "Genetic evidence clearly shows that any DNA older than 50,000 years came from Africa. We're all of very recent African origin."

At UC Davis, evolutionary anthropologist Henry McHenry, an expert in pre-human hominids, said the discovery ends the controversy about human origins.

"Genetic evidence has shown our species arose in Africa," he said. "But the fossil evidence has not been there. But 'bang,' here it is."

However, Milford Wolpoff, a University of Michigan professor of biological anthropology in Ann Arbor, who believes humans may have originated outside Africa, told the Associated Press the skulls, while significant, shed little light on the origins of modern humans.

"It doesn't resolve the issue of where modern humans came from," he said.

The skulls were uncovered in 1997 by heavy rains near the village of Herto, but White and his Ethiopian team leaders delayed publication of the findings until Wednesday to allow precise dating of the specimens and to reassemble the skulls.

One adult skull was put back together from more than 200 pieces found in a 400-square-foot area, White said.

They were dated by two methods at the Berkeley Geochronology Center, led by Paul R. Renne, and at Los Alamos by WoldeGabriel.

The discoveries show modern humans most likely did not evolve from Neanderthals but evolved separately, White said. The skulls are older than most Neanderthals, who died out around 30,000 years ago.

The fossil evidence, Asfaw said in a statement, "clearly shows modern humans were living around 160,000 years ago with full-fledged Homo sapien features. The 'out of Africa' hypothesis is now tested ... (and) we can conclusively say Neanderthals had nothing to do with modern humans. They went extinct."

The skulls of the two adults and a child have strikingly modern features: a prominent forehead and a flat face, not the heavy browed skulls of older specimens. They may not be completely modern but they almost are, White said.

A sketch prepared for the team by an experienced forensic science artist shows a rugged but very human individual who would be welcome on any football team.

"They're close enough to be called Homo sapiens," White said.

They have been named Homo sapiens idaltu. "Idaltu" means "elder" in the Afar language, spoken in the region where the skulls were found.

At UC Davis, McHenry said he has had an opportunity to study the discoveries and noted the heads have the markings of being cut, but not crude cuts as if the heads were butchered. "The marks were made in a ritual way as if they were part of a burial ritual, something that indicates humans," he said.

At UC Berkeley, White -- an expert in human cannibalism -- agreed. He said the marks appeared decorative and the fossils were found without the rest of the skeletons.