8.7-million-year-old fossil ape from Türkiye poses questions on human origins

[gary]

24 August 2023

A new fossil ape from an 8.7-million-year-old site in Türkiye is challenging
long-accepted ideas of human origins and adding weight to the theory that
the ancestors of African apes and humans evolved in Europe before migrating
to Africa between nine and seven million years ago.

Story here :-
https://www.utoronto.ca/news/ancient-ape-turkiye-challenges-story-human-origins-researchers-say

Link to paper in Nature Communications Biology :-
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-023-05210-5

[Steffen]

I have no doubt that our evolutionary ancestors migrated, diverged and merged again several times, but what does this find have to do with Europe? The fossil site is clearly in Asia.

[gary]

Anatolia was connected to the European mainland until c. 5600 BCE,
when the melting ice sheets caused the sea level in the Mediterranean to rise
around 120 m, triggering the formation of the Turkish Straits.
As a result, two former lakes (the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea)
were connected to the Mediterranean Sea, which then separated Anatolia
from Europe.

[Steffen]

Yes, and Europe and Asia have long been (and still are) connected along most of their border.

Besides, humanoid fossils around the Black Sea from the late miocene are nothing new. There have been several already, including Ankarapithecus, Graecopithecus and Ouranopithecus macedoniensis. The late miocene (from which this recent find is) was a long time ago, there is very long way from there to the first homo species. Not to mention many depopulations and migrations due to geological and climate events, incl. glaciations, periodic drying and flooding of the Mediterranean, climatic changes in Africa, etc.

Scientific papers tend to speak of Eurasian apes. Headlining “ancestors of African apes and humans evolved in Europe” and implying that the “out of Africa” hypotheses was wrong all along, has a politicising, even jingoistic slant that shouldn’t go unchallenged.

[gary]

Hi Steffen,

The paper in Nature discusses these considerably and as it says,
"Hominines were more diverse in the late Miocene of the eastern Mediterranean than previously understood" :)



On the contrary, I don't read anything in this paper that is jingoistic at all.
It's all part of the bigger puzzle. I've journeyed along the shores of Lake
Turkana in northern Kenya, close to the borders of Ethiopia and South
Sudan, where some of the oldest finds of genus Homo have
been made. Today, that part of the Rift Valley is sparsely populated and
predominantly desert. I have happened across the occasional lone hunter,
in the desert, totally naked, clutching nothing but a spear looking for prey.
Though remarkably people somehow survive there today, it is so
inhospitable that it was likely to be a very different landscape 2 million
years ago. But no doubt still really tough and an evolutionary driving
force contributor.

[Joe Brimacombe]

Thanks for posting. How interesting.