The earliest human beings
I wrote in the book (page 10) that “Human beings of
the kind we know–Homo sapiens–have,
according to what is known today, existed for about 150 000 years”. And I
continued somewhat later (page 11) by contending that “According to the
evidence available today man, like other animal species, appeared in one single
place, and this place, for man, was somewhere in Africa.”
Both of these assertions thus are related to “what is
known today” indicating that new discoveries may change matters. And within
this particular field that seems to happen continuously. Thus, in an article in
The Economist (June 10th,
2017) entitled “Even earlier man” some important new findings are described in
this way:
“The remains of
at least five individuals, collected from a site … in Morocco, look like modern
humans and seem to date back 300,000 years. That not only makes them the oldest
Homo sapiens found so far … . It also demonstrates that sapiens was far more widespread than researchers had suspected, for
previously early fossils of the species have come exclusively from eastern and
southern Africa.”
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