The conventional view of human evolution and how early man colonized the world has been thrown into doubt by a series of stunning paleontological discoveries suggesting that Africa was not the sole cradle of humankind. Scientists have found a handful of ancient human skulls at an archaeological site two hours from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, that suggest a Eurasian chapter in the long evolutionary story of man, a British newspaper reported Wednesday. The skulls, jawbones and fragments of limb bones suggest that our ancient human ancestors migrated out of Africa far earlier than previously thought and spent a long evolutionary interlude in Eurasia ـ before moving back into Africa to complete the story of man, wrote Steve Connor, Science Editor of the Independent yesterday.
Experts believe fossilized bones unearthed at the medieval village of Dmanisi in the foothills of the Caucuses, and dated to about 1.8 million years ago, are the oldest indisputable remains of humans discovered outside of Africa. But what has really excited the researchers is the discovery that these early humans (or "hominins") are far more primitiveـlooking than the Homo erectus humans that were, until now, believed to be the first people to migrate out of Africa about 1 million years ago.
The Dmanisi people had brains that were about 40 percent smaller than those of Homo erectus and they were much shorter in stature than the classical Homo erectus skeletons, according to Professor David Lordkipanidze, General Director of the Georgia National Museum. "Before our findings, the prevailing view was that humans came out of Africa almost 1 million years ago, that they already had sophisticated stone tools, and that their body anatomies were quite advanced in terms of brain capacity and limb proportions. But what we are finding now is quite different," the newspaper quoted the professor.
"The Dmanisi hominins are the earliest representatives of our own genus ـ Homo erectus ـ outside Africa, and they represent the most primitive population of the species Homo erectus to date. They might be ancestral to all later Homo erectus populations, which would suggest a Eurasian origin of Homo erectus." Professor Lordkipanidze also raised the prospect that Homo erectus may have evolved in Eurasia from the more primitiveـlooking Dmanisi population and then migrated back to Africa to eventually give rise to our own species, Homo sapiens ـ modern man.
"The question is whether Homo erectus originated in Africa or Eurasia, and if in Eurasia, did we have viceـversa migration? This idea looked very stupid a few years ago, but today it seems not so stupid," he told the festival. The scientists have discovered a total of five skulls and a solitary jawbone. It is clear that they had relatively small brains, almost a third of the size of modern humans. "They are quite small. Their lower limbs are very human and their upper limbs are still quite archaic and they had very primitive stone tools," Professor Lordkipanidze said. "Their brain capacity is about 600 cubic centimeters. The prevailing view before this discovery was that the humans who first left Africa had a brain size of about 1,000 cubic centimeters."
The only human fossil to predate the Dmanisi specimens are of an archaic species Homo habilis, or "handy man," found only in Africa, which used simple stone tools and lived between about 2.5 million and 1.6 million years ago. "All these finds show that the ancestors of these people were much more primitive than we thought. I don''t think that we were so lucky as to have found the first travelers out of Africa. Georgia is the cradle of the first Europeans, I would say," the professor said. "What we learnt from the Dmanisi fossils is that they are quite small ـ between 1.44 meters to 1.5 meters tall. What is interesting is that their lower limbs, their tibia bones, are very humanـlike so it seems they were very good runners," he said.ـ

Alwatan Daily