Oldest Hominid Remains in Europe Evidence of Early Human Spread

JAKARTA – The rediscovery of five fossils in southeastern Spain shifts the marker for the oldest hominid in Europe.

If verified, the discovery provides strong evidence to support the claim that members of the genus Homo first reached Europe by crossing the open waters between Morocco and Gibraltar, demonstrating a level of technological sophistication previously thought to have emerged much later.

While this finding is surprising, it is consistent with several other recent discoveries around the world.

Before our species, Homo sapiens, appeared on Earth, other hominids had explored out of Africa and inhabited much of Asia and Europe.

Although our ancestors and these early explorers were making stone tools more than a million years ago, it was originally assumed that Eurasia was populated exclusively by land travel. The idea that Homo erectus or its close relatives could build boats or swim long distances was considered implausible.

Therefore, if true, the route to Europe likely passed through parts of Asia and around the Black Sea before moving west.

The dating of remains from Orce, Granada, at 1.3 million years old, contradicts this assumption, as they are much older than remains found in Eastern or Central Europe.

Dr Lluis Gibert of the University of Barcelona is the lead author of a new attempt to date these fossils using magnetic records in the sediments where they were found.

Magnetic rocks record the direction of Earth’s magnetic field when they were formed. Earth’s periodic pole reversals allow paleontologists to date these rocks with more confidence than alternative methods.

The exposures in the Orce area are ideal for this, Gibert said. “The peculiarity of these sites is that they are stratified and are arranged in very long sedimentary sequences, more than eighty meters. Usually, these sites are found in caves or in very short stratigraphic sequences, which do not allow the development of long paleomagnetic sequences where you can find different magnetic reversals,” he said in a statement.

This discovery has significant implications for our understanding of human evolution and its spread beyond Africa.

This suggests that early hominids were much more adaptable and intelligent than previously thought, and that they may have explored the seas much earlier than previously believed.

(wbs)