Study dates humans back 195,000 years

Our debut as humans just became a lot more historic.

A new study concludes that the earliest known humans appeared in southern Ethiopia around 195,000 years ago, about 35,000 years earlier than previously thought, based on what researchers say are the oldest anatomically modern human fossils ever found.

Although leaving the full-fledged arrival of Homo sapiens far from resolved, the “bombshell,” as it’s being called by other scientists, suggests that roughly three-fourths of modern human evolution occurred within the African continent.

“This is really good news,” said Sally McBrearty, an paleoanthropologist at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.

Study co-author John Fleagle, a professor of anatomical sciences at Stony Brook University, said the research fits well with evidence that the last of our genes became fully distinct from other primates around 200,000 years ago. It supports other genetic studies showing that the bulk of human genetic diversity occurring since then is found within Africa, before inhabitants began emigrating to the Middle East, Europe, and Asia about 50,000 years ago.