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2019

An early modern outside Africa

Eric Delson CUNY Lehman College

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are too incomplete for their status as H. sapiens to be certain. Could molecular approaches be pidia enisoa eanderthal used to determine the species they are from? presence Jinniushan 210 kyr (Earliest known 195–52 kyr It is not always possible to recover DNA from 450–35 kyr European H. sapiens) 147–91 kyr ancient . However, analysing ancient 250–150 kyr 170 kyr proteins preserved in fossils, a method termed isliya palaeo­proteomics, is starting to be used to iahe 194–177 kyr China ali identify species (see go.nature.com/2xkosom). 160 kyr China Jebel rhoud Compared with analysis of ancient DNA, 250–150 kyr uttiyeh palaeo­proteomics requires less specialized Israel 315 kyr ualondon handling of the to prevent contamination. 500–200 kyr China It was recently used14 to analyse a fossilized 300 kyr loresailie athnora jaw found in China that is approximately 160,000 years old, enabling the specimen to Stone tools 250–100 kyr 320 kyr be identified as an enigmatic hominin called a , whose scarce fossils have also been lorisbad found at Denisova in Siberia. Perhaps palaeoproteomics can be used to 260 kyr verify the identity of the Apidima fossils. It H. sapiens Hominin possibly related to H. sapiens might also be possible to apply this method to Denisovan Hominin not assigned to species contemporaneous fossils from Asia (estimated to be 300,000–150,000 years old) that have Figure 1 | Some key early fossils of sapiens and related species in Africa and Eurasia. Harvati not yet been definitively assigned to a species. et al.5 present their analyses of two fossil skulls from Apidima Cave in Greece. They report that the fossil These fossils are of interest for their potential to Apidima 1 is an H. sapiens specimen that is at least 210,000 years old, from a time when reveal how many hominin species might have occupied many European sites. It is the earliest known example of H. sapiens in Europe, and is at least lived during this time. Perhaps some of them 160,000 years older than the next oldest H. sapiens fossils found in Europe6 (not shown). Harvati and 7 are also H. sapiens, although I doubt it. Among colleagues confirm that, as previously reported , Apidima 2 is a Neanderthal specimen, and they estimate the most complete of these specimens are that it is at least 170,000 years old. The authors’ findings, along with other discoveries of which a selection crania from India at a site called Hathnora15, is shown here, shed light on the timing and locations of early successful and failed dispersals out of 16 16 and from China at Dali , Jinniushan and Africa of hominins (modern and other human relatives, such as Neanderthals and ). 17 kyr, thousand years old. Hualongdong . Until such fossils are stud- ied using palaeoproteomics, analyses such as those of Harvati and colleagues provide our and 35,000 years ago6, eventually giving rise Florisbad and fossils9, and an best handle on the complex history of our to the ancestral population of Europeans alive earlier study10 suggested that Zuttiyeh might be species and our close relatives as these popula- today1. This evidence from Apidima, along an early H. sapiens. This is a view that I favour, tions dispersed out of Africa — from the early, with other discoveries, demonstrates that, given its similarity to the shape of the forehead unsuccessful dispersals to the migrations that on more than one occasion, modern humans of the Florisbad fossil. Future analysis might eventually succeeded. ■ kept pushing north and westwards from reveal that Zuttiyeh is an even older modern Africa and the Levant into Europe. Rather human than Apidima 1; nevertheless, it is not Eric Delson is at Lehman College and the than a single exit of hominins from Africa to from Europe. Graduate Center, City University of New York, populate Eurasia, there must have been sev- A jaw of an from and the American Museum of Natural History, eral dispersals, some of which did not result in in Israel has been dated to New York, New York 10024, USA. permanent occupations by these hominins and approximately 194,000–177,000 years ago11. e-mail: [email protected] their descendants. Other early modern human fossils have been 1. O’Shea, N. & Delson, E. Nat. Hist. 126(8), 19–22 There is immense interest in understanding found at Skhul and Qafzeh in Israel, dated (2018). 12 the timing and location of both the successful to around 130,000–90,000 years ago . All of 2. Hublin, J.-J. et al. Nature 546, 289–292 (2017). and failed dispersals of hominins (including these early Eurasian human fossils seem to 3. Grün, R. et al. Nature 382, 500–501 (1996). 4. Brooks, A. S. et al. Science 360, 90–94 (2018). modern humans) from Africa. The first represent what might be called ‘failed’ disper- 5. Harvati, K. et al. Nature 571, 500–504 (2019). hominin dispersal out of Africa is thought to sals from Africa — they reached the Middle 6. Hublin, J.-J. Quat. Sci. Rev. 118, 194–210 (2015). have been when members of the species Homo East and southeastern Europe, but did not 7. Harvati, K., Stringer, C. & Karkanas, P. J. Hum. Evol. 60, 246–250 (2011). erectus exited some 2 million years ago. The persist in these regions. There is evidence that 8. Bartsiokas, A., Arsuaga, J. L., Aubert, M. & Grün, R. second wave of departures occurred when these populations were replaced at these or J. Hum. Evol. 109, 22–29 (2017). the ancestral species that eventually gave rise neighbouring sites by Neanderthals. 9. Freidline, S. E., Gunz, P., Janković, L., Harvati, K. & to Neanderthals moved into Europe around Farther east, fossils of early H. sapiens in Hublin, J. J. J. Hum. Evol. 62, 225–241 (2012). 10. Zeitoun, V. C. R. Acad. Sci. 332, 521–525 (2001). 800,000–600,000 years ago. Asia, dated from between at least 90,000 and 11. Hershkovitz, I. et al. Science 359, 456–459 (2018). A third group of migrations out of Africa 50,000 years ago, have been found in regions 12. Groucutt, H. S., Scerri, E. M. L., Stringer, C. & were those of H. sapiens. Many key fossil dis- ranging from Saudi Arabia to Australia13. Petraglia, M. D. Quat. Int. 515, 30–52 (2019). 13. Groucutt, H. S. et al. Nature Ecol. Evol. 2, 800–809 coveries from Israel document early examples These Asian fossils, like the European speci- (2018). of these dispersals. A fossil that includes the mens of H. sapiens from between 50,000 and 14. Chen, F. et al. Nature 569, 409–412 (2019). forehead region of a skull found there, at a site 40,000 years ago, might have come from popu- 15. Athreya, S. in The Evolution and History of Human Populations in South Asia (eds Petraglia, M. D. & called Zuttiyeh, is dated to between 500,000 lations that achieved persistent, successful dis- Allchin, B.) 137–170 (Springer, 2007). and 200,000 years ago, and analysis of the fos- persals and contributed to the ancestry of some 16. Athreya, S. & Wu, X. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 164, sil’s shape indicates that it is either an early living humans. 679–701 (2017). 17. Wu, X.-J. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 116, Neanderthal or from a population ances- Given that the Apidima 1 fossil and those 9820–9824 (2019). tral to both Neanderthals and H. sapiens9. from Misliya and Zuttiyeh are only partial The Zuttiyeh fossil shows similarities to the skulls, some might argue that the specimens This article was published online on 10 July 2019.

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