Balkan Pre-Human Remains Identified as Older Than Stated

Chang et al. / Nature Communications / NPG

A research team led by German and Bulgarian scientists has claimed that the genealogical split between the great apes and humans happened several hundred thousand years earlier than originally thought, and in an entirely different location.

Not only did the split happen earlier, but an international research team headed by Professor Madelaine Böhme from the University of Tübingen's Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, and Professor Nikolai Spassov of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, has suggested that the earliest known human lineage originated in Eastern Europe — not in northern Africa as has been widely asserted.

Using state-of-the-art technology to study the dental root features of two hominin fossils of Graecopithecus freybergi — claimed to be mankind's earliest known relatives — the research team...