Archaic Homo Sapiens, Homo Heidelbergensis and Homo Antecessor | Early European History And Religion

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ARCHAIC HOMO SAPIENS

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Homo Heidelbergensis
Archaic Homo sapiens is term used to describe hominins viewed as transitions between Homo erectus and modern man, and possibly Neanderthals too. These creatures came on the scene when big browed, jutting jaw hominins were still around. Homo sapien means "Wise Man."

Geologic Age: Variable estimates, ranging between 100,000 to 750,000 years. Most scientists believe modern man originated in Africa between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. A 260,000-year-old Florisbad skull from South Africa had pronounced browridges but less of than its predecessors and was more like the brow of modern humans.

Size: males: 1.75 meters (5 feet 9 inches), 62 kilograms (137 pounds); females: 1.57 meters (5 feet 2 inches), 51 kilograms (112 pounds). Skull Features: bony chin and high forehead typical of modern humans but bigger face, weaker chin and a protruding browridge above the eyes. Body Features: Basically modern but more ruggedly built.

Discovery Sites: Found in Asia, Europe and Africa but not America and Australia. Most complete skull found in 1960 in Petralona, Greece by Greek villagers. Skull housed in Paleontological Museum, University of Thessaloniki. Good fossils also found in Zambia. [Source: Kenneth Weaver, National Geographic, November 1985 [┹]

A one-million-year-old cranium from Buia, Eritrea has characters of both Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. A "spectacular" partial cranium of the same age with a similar billing was was found in Ethiopia. The earliest hard evidence of fire comes in the form of stone hearths and clay ovens made in the last 250,000 years, some think, by archaic “homo sapiens”.

José María Bermúdez de Castro at the National Research Centre on Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain told New Scientist that there is indirect evidence that hominins arrive in Europe more than 1,2 million years ago: “[Stone tools from] Pirro Nord in Italy may be older than Sima del Elefante,” dated to 1.1 million years old. “Likewise, the Barranco León and Fuente Nueva 3 Spanish sites have yielded stone tools probably 1.3 million years old.” [Source: Colin Barras, New Scientist, March 26, 2008]

Around 700,000 years ago there were great temperatures, ice volume and sea level fluctuations. Many species in Africa went extinct and those that survived mostly remain today. These changes may have also been important in the emergence of a species that was a predecessor of modern humans, a species that was able to deal with a changing environment. This also enabled them to live in habitats outside Africa.

Websites and Resources on Hominins and Human Origins: Smithsonian Human Origins Program humanorigins.si.edu ; Institute of Human Origins iho.asu.edu ; Becoming Human University of Arizona site becominghuman.org ; Hall of Human Origins American Museum of Natural History amnh.org/exhibitions ; The Bradshaw Foundation bradshawfoundation.com ; Britannica Human Evolution britannica.com ; Human Evolution handprint.com ; University of California Museum of Anthropology ucmp.berkeley.edu; John Hawks' Anthropology Weblog johnhawks.net/ ; New Scientist: Human Evolution newscientist.com/article-topic/human-evolution

400,000-Year-old Archaic Human Remains Found in Israeli?

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Homo Heidelbergensis
In December 2010, archaeologists announced in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology that the modern human lived in Israel as early as 400,000 years ago. It’s the earliest evidence for the existence of “modern man” anywhere and undermines the traditional view that modern humans emerged around 200,000 years ago. [Source: World Science, Tel Aviv University, December 30, 2010]

Archaeologists Avi Gopher and Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University in Israel and other scientists analyzed eight human teeth found in Qesem Cave near Rosh Ha’ayin, Israel. Using CT scans and X-rays they concluded the size and shape of the teeth are very similar to those of modern man. The teeth also are said to resemble other evidence of modern man from two other Israeli sites, dated to around 100,000 years ago.

Qesem Cave is dated to a period between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago. Gopher and Barkai said the culture of those who dwelt in the Qesem Cave at the time included regular use of fire, hunting, cutting and sharing of animal meat, and mining raw materials to make flint blades. This reinforces a view that this was innovative and pioneering behavior that may correspond with the appearance of modern man, they added.

In recent years, archaeological evidence and skeletons found in Spain and China also undermined the proposition that modern humans evolved in Africa, according to the researchers. Yet they described the Qesem Cave findings as unprecedented because of their early age.

Human Ancestor with Large Teeth and No Chin Lived in Israel 130,000 Years Ago

A previously unknown group of ancient humans discovered in Israel may have coexisted alongside modern humans and Neanderthals, interbreeding with both groups and sharing knowledge and tools with them as well, according to two studies in the June 25, 2021 issue of the journal Science. The mysterious human may have been the ancestor of Neanderthals. Compared with modern humans, it had a different skull structure, no chin and very large teeth. [Source: Charles Q. Choi, Live Science, June 25, 2021]

Charles Q. Choi wrote in Live Science: The new fossils were unearthed in 2010 near the city of Ramla in central Israel, after quarrying in the mining area of the Nesher cement plant revealed what is now known as the Nesher Ramla prehistoric site. After digging down about 26 feet (8 meters), the researchers found stone tools and human bones, as well as large quantities of animal bones, including the remains of horses, deer and extinct cattle known as aurochs. It took scientists a better part of a decade to figure out what they had. "People think it's simple to quickly analyze fossils, but it takes a lot of time," Israel Hershkovitz, a paleoanthropologist at Tel Aviv University and lead author of one of the two studies on the discovery, told Live Science. "Once you find the fossils, you have to clean them and reconstruct them and then collect comparable material around the world to properly understand them."

After all that work, the researchers identified the Nesher Ramla bones as belonging to a new type of Homo, or member of the human family tree, previously unknown to science. They dated the fossils and found them to be about 120,000 to 140,000 years old. The Nesher Ramla bones share features with Neanderthals, especially in the teeth and jaws, but these mystery humans had skulls more closely resembling those of more archaic human lineages, the scientists noted. And this new type of Homo is very unlike modern humans, possessing a completely different skull structure, no chin and very large teeth.

Sitting at the crossroads of Africa, Europe and Asia, the Nesher Ramla group may have also migrated eastward. "This may help explain archaic fossils discovered in Asia with Neanderthal-like features," Hershkovitz said. Hershkovitz admitted these ideas were provocative. "I can hear paleoanthropologists sharpening their knives now," he joked. It's a mystery how the Nesher Ramla people died off. "We don't know why, but most Middle Pleistocene groups met their end as a large population of modern humans came out of Africa about 70,000 to 80,000 years ago and eventually took control of the entire world," Hershkovitz said. "Whether it was because of the newcomers or not, I don't know."

Large -Teeth, Chinless Israeli Human Ancestor Related to 400,000 Israeli Hominin

Charles Q. Choi wrote in Live Science: After comparing the Nesher Ramla Homo bones with other fossils previously found in Israel that have baffled scientists for years — such as 160,000-year-old bones from Tabun cave, 250,000-year-old remains from Zuttiyeh cave and 400,000-year-old specimens from Qesem cave — the team "realized they all belonged to the same group," Hershkovitz said. "They were a very large population in the region from at least about 400,000 years ago to about 100,000 years ago." [Source: Charles Q. Choi, Live Science, June 25, 2021]

Hebrew University of Jerusalem archaeologist Yossi Zaidner and his colleagues found stone tools linked with the Nesher Ramla bones, such as points that could later be hafted onto shafts to form spears or arrows. The specific way of crafting these artifacts was previously seen only among modern humans and Neanderthals.

These new findings suggest that two different groups of humans lived side by side in the Middle East for more than 100,000 years between about 100,000 and 200,000 years ago — the Nesher Ramla people, who lived in the region starting about 400,000 years ago, and modern humans, who arrived there about 200,000 years ago. They likely not only shared knowledge and tools but also interbred — fossils previously unearthed in Skhul and Qafzeh caves in northern Israel that date to between 80,000 and 120,000 years ago may represent groups of intermixed modern-human and Nesher Ramla lineage, the scientists noted.

When the scientists compared these fossils with others around the world, they found that the nearest match came from the Sima de los Huesos, or "Pit of Bones," an underground cave in the Atapuerca Mountains in northern Spain, Hershkovitz said. The nature of the bones there are hotly contested, potentially sharing similarities with modern humans, Neanderthals and the mysterious extinct human group known as the Denisovans. Hershkovitz and his colleagues were not able to recover DNA from these fossils. "The problem in Israel is that we live in a hot country," Hershkovitz said. DNA can break down because of heat, "so we never manage to extract DNA from bones older than 15,000 years. We gave it a try, but we knew from the very beginning that our chances were basically nil."

Although these newfound fossils lack DNA, they may help solve a mystery in human evolution: How did modern-human DNA enter the gene pool of Neanderthals long before the groups met? Previous research suggested modern humans, or Homo sapiens, and European Neanderthals mated more than 200,000 years ago, long before archaeological evidence suggested modern humans first entered Europe about 45,000 years ago. Now, Hershkovitz and his colleagues suggest hybrids of modern humans and the Nesher Ramla group may have introduced modern-human DNA into European Neanderthals.

In fact, the researchers suggested that the Nesher Ramla humans may be the ancestors of Neanderthals. "Most researchers believe that Neanderthals started, developed and eventually finished in Europe. Here, we say that maybe Neanderthals were not European — that maybe there's a strong component from the Near East within the Neanderthal population of Europe," Hershkovitz said. "Nesher Ramla may have been the core population from which Europe was recolonized by Neanderthals between glacial periods."

Homo Heidelbergensis

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Homo Heidelbergensis
Homo heidelbergensis (hy-dil-ber-GEN-sis) is a species of “Homo” named after a 500,000-year-old jawbone found in 1907 near Heidelberg, Germany that some scientists believe evolved into Neanderthals. Its tools included the Acheulan hand ax.

Some scientists believe that all their hominin remains found in Europe come from three species: “Homo erectus “, “Homo sapiens” and Neanderthals. Others believe that the “Homo “ tree is much more complex. They say other species such as “Homo heidelbergensis” and perhaps other hominin species not yet discovered may have existed as well.

Geologic Age: 700,000 to 200,000 years ago, Size: males: 1.7 meters (5 feet 7 inches), 57 kilograms (125 pounds); females: 1.57 meters (5 feet 2 inches), 51 kilograms (112 pounds). Skull Features: large mandible, a very large browridge, and a larger braincase and flatter face than older early human species; Body Features: Similar to modern humans but wide. They were the first early human species to live in colder climates; their — short, wide bodies were likely an adaptation to conserving heat. Discovery Sites: Europe; possibly Asia (China); Africa (eastern and southern). Heidelberg, Germany is the most famous discovery site and the source of its name

Homo Antecessor

Homo antecessor is an extinct species of archaic humans dated to 1.2 million to 800,000 years based primarily of fossils found at Sierra de Atapuerca in in northern Spain. In 1994 and 1995 Nearly a 100 hominin fossils from a 10-year-old boy and five other individuals and 200 stone tools were found in an 800,000 year old strata at the Sierra de Atapuerca's Gran Dolina site. The site was inadvertently revealed by a railroad excavation.

Some scientists describe the hominin found at Sierra de Atapuerca as an entirely new species — “Homo antecessor” (Antecessoris Latin for “explorer” or “pioneer”), which might be a common ancestor for both modern man an Neanderthals. The skull of the boy had features similar to both species, including a prominent jaw, prominent brow ridges and projecting face like Neanderthals and sunken cheekbones and tooth development similar to modern humans.Many paleontologists dismiss the claims because they say it is difficult draw to many conclusions from bones of children. Many paleontologists also don’t like the Homo antecessor categorization.

Populations of Homo antecessor species may have been present elsewhere in Western Europe, and were among the first to colonize Europe — hence their name. The first fossils were formally described in 1997 as the last common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals, supplanting the more conventional Homo heidelbergensis in this position. Homo antecessor has since been reinterpreted as an offshoot from the modern human line, although probably one branching off just before the modern human and Neanderthal split. [Source: Wikipedia]

Despite being such so old, the face of Homo antecessor is surprisingly similar to that of modern humans rather than other archaic humans. Its overall flatness as well as the curving of the cheekbone as it merges into the upper jaw is similar that of modern humans — although these elements are known only from a juvenile specimen. Brain volume could have been 1,000 cubic centimeters (61 cubic inches) or more, but no intact braincase has been discovered. For comparison, present-day modern humans males average 1,270 cubic centimeters; females average 1,130 cubic centimeters. Height estimates range from 162.3 to 186.8 centimeters (5 feet 4 inches to 6 feet 2 inches). Homo antecessor may have been broad-chested and rather heavy, much like Neanderthals, although the limbs were proportionally long, a trait more commonly in tropical populations. The kneecaps are thin and have poorly developed tendon attachments. The feet indicate Homo antecessor walked differently compared to modern humans.

Homo antecessor predominantly made simple pebble and flake stone tools out of quartz and chert, although they used a variety of materials. Their tool making has some similarities with the more complex Acheulean tools, which is characteristic of contemporary African and later European sites. Groups may have been dispatching hunting parties, which mainly targeted deer in their savannah and mixed woodland environment. There is no evidence they were using fire, and they similarly only inhabited inland Iberia during warm periods, presumably retreating to the coast at other times.

World's Oldest Hominin DNA — from a Homo Antecessor — Shows They Were Very Different from Humans

In a study published April 1, 2020 in the journal Nature, researchers announced that they had sequenced the ancient proteins in the enamel of an 800,000-year-old Homo antecessor tooth, using the proteins to decipher part of the genetic code that created them. After comparing that code with genetic data from recent human tooth samples, the scientists concluded that Homo antecessor's DNA was too different from that humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans to be placed on the same branch of the evolutionary tree as them. Rather, the researchers wrote, Homo antecessor was probably a "sister species" of the shared ancestor that led to the evolution of modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans [Source: Brandon Specktor, Live Science, April 4, 2020]

"I am happy that the protein study provides evidence that the Homo antecessor species may be closely related to the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans," study co-author José María Bermúdez de Castro, scientific co-director of the excavations in Atapuerca, said in a statement. "The features shared by Homo antecessor with these hominins clearly appeared much earlier than previously thought."

Brandon Specktor wrote in Live Science: To reach these results, the researchers used a method called paleoproteomics — literally, the study of ancient proteins. Using mass spectrometry, which displays the masses of all the molecules in a sample, scientists can identify the specific proteins in a given fossil. Our cells build proteins according to instructions contained in our DNA, with three nucleotides, or letters, in a string of DNA coding for a specific amino acid. Strings of amino acids form a protein. So, the amino acid chains that form each person's unique protein sequence reveal the patterns of nucleotides that form that person's genetic code, lead study author Frido Welker, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Copenhagen, told Haaretz.com.

Ceprano Man

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Homo Antecessor female
Ceprano Man is an archaic human known from a single skull cap accidentally unearthed in a highway construction project in 1994 near Ceprano, 72 kilometers (45 miles) southeast of Rome, in the Province of Frosinone, Italy. Dated to be 430,000 to 385,000 years old, it was initially considered Homo cepranensis, Homo erectus, or possibly Homo antecessor; but in recent studies, most regard it either as a form of Homo heidelbergensis sharing affinities with African forms or an early morph of Neanderthal.

In 1994, Italian archaeologist Italo Biddittu discovered hundreds of bone fragments unearthed by a bulldozer building a highway near Ceprano. He and his colleagues pieced enough of the fragments together by the spring of 1996 to reveal most of the skullcap of a “Homo “ species they initially dated to between 800,000 and 900,000 years old, making it considerably older than other “Homo” species found in Europe at that time. Scientists had difficulty classifying it. Archaeologist Antonio Ascenzi told National Geographic, "Classic Homo erectus has a slight crest along the center of its skull. This skull has no crest at all." Ceprano man's brain was also significantly larger than classic “Homo erectus” .

After clarification of the Ceprano Man site’s geostratigraphic, biostratigraphic and archaeological relation to the well known and nearby Acheulean site of Fontana Ranuccio, it was determined that Ceprano Man was 430,000 to 385,000 years old. Some paleontologists still stand by the belief that Ceprano Man 900,00 to 800,000 years old.

Archaic Homo Sapiens in Africa

A one-million-year-old cranium from Buia, Eritrea has characters of both Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. A "spectacular" partial cranium of the same age with a similar billing was was found in Ethiopia. Some of the earliest hard evidence of fire comes in the form of stone hearths and clay ovens made in the last 250,000 years, some think, by archaic “homo sapiens”.

Around 700,000 years ago there were great temperatures, ice volume and sea level fluctuations. Many species of animals in Africa went extinct and those that survived mostly remain today. These changes may have also been important in the emergence of a species that was a predecessor of modern humans, a species that was able to deal with a changing environment. This also enabled them to live in habitats outside Africa.

The Ndutu skull is the partial cranium of a hominin dated to 450,000 to 400,000 years that has been variously categorized as late Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis (Homo rhodesiensis) and early Homo sapiens. The fossil was found in 1973 in northern Tanzania at Lake Ndutu, a seasonal soda lake in the Serengeti, adjacent to Lake Masek and the Main Gorge at Olduvai. [Source: Wikipedia]

Kabwe 1, also called the Broken Hill skull, is a fossil dated to 324,000 to 274,000 ago that was labeled Homo rhodesiensis by Arthur Smith Woodward in 1921, the year it was discovered. Most scientists today regard it as Homo heidelbergensis. The cranium was discovered in Broken Hill lead mine in Mutwe Wa Nsofu Area of Northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe, Zambia) by two miners. In addition to the cranium, an upper jaw from another individual, a sacrum, a tibia, and two femur fragments were also found. The skull is kept in the Natural History Museum in London. While the cranial volume overlaps with the range of Homo sapiens, other features such as the brain case morphology and prominent brow ridges are suggestive of older species. These features have led some scientists to the conclusion that it is best categorized as Homo heidelbergensis.

The Ngaloba Skull (Laetoli Hominid 18, LH 18 was discovered in 1976 in Ngaloba, Laetoli, Tanzania. Dated to be around 120,000 years old (but debated), the skull is transitional between Homo heidelbergensis and early modern Homo sapiens. It has a number of primitive features but also has some modern characteristics such as a reduced brow ridge and smaller facial features. The late date of this specimen indicates that archaic humans lived alongside modern populations for some time. [Source: Australian Museum]

Archaic Humans in China from 300,000 to 100,000 Years Ago

The earliest evidence of early modern man (used to be called Cro-Magnon Man) in China dates to around 100,000 to 40,000 years ago. What took place between the arrival of the first hominins in Asia roughly 2 million years ago and the earliest modern man is very sketchy, ambiguous and confusing. Many of the hominin fossils found in China from this period are very strange and some of them have been labeled new species.

Some scientists believe the unusual fossils coming out of China, dated from 300,000 to 100,00 years ago, are from Denisovans, Neanderthal-like humans that are known only from a tooth and finger bone found in Siberia and a jawbone found in Tibet. According to the Washington Post: Denisovans exist mainly as sequenced DNA taken from finger bone and a tooth found in the Siberian cave. Thought to have lived some 100,000 to 50,000 years ago, the Denisovans shared genetic material with humans as well as Neanderthals. A 2015 analysis of the specimen scraps indicated that the Denisovans lived for some 60,000 years side-by-side with Neanderthals and humans in Asia.

According to to Business Insider: Archaic Homo sapien fossils often carry a mixture of old facial structures and modern features so that timeline is a bit more complicated than school books would have us think. That's the case, for instance, for remains found in Morocco in 2017 from about 300,000 years ago with Homo sapien-like features which suggested humans might have emerged much earlier than previously thought. Recent findings of archaic human remains in Israel and Greece dating back about 200,000 years also suggested human ancestors might have left Africa a lot earlier than previously thought. There's also paleontological and genetic evidence that suggests ancient humans interbred with the Neanderthals and Denisovans, their cousins, further complicating the bloodlines. [Source: Marianne Guenot, Business Insider, August 7, 2023].

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons except 500,000-year-old spear heads from Scientific American

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated April 2024