A 180,000-year-old fossil found on Mount Carmel is the oldest representative of our known species outside the African cradle of humanity.
When did the modern man, aka Homo sapiens, come out of Africa ? The presence of fossils belonging to our species in the Israeli caves of Skhul and Qafzeh, dated respectively 90,000 and 120,000 years ago, gave a fairly wide range. But the discovery of a half-jaw of about 180,000 years ago, in the nearby cave of Misliya, on Mount Carmel, also attributed to a sapiens , shows that excursions to the Levant were much earlier than we had not considered it.
"It almost doubles the age of these first migrations out of Africa ," says anthropologist Israel Hershkovitz (Tel Aviv University), who is responsible for the excavations. And it also means that periods of interaction with other representatives of the genus Homo that were already out of Africa were much longer than previously thought. " With the announcement of the discovery in 2017 in Morocco , on the site of Jebel Irhoud, a representative of our old line 315 000 years, it is time once again to push in time and space the hold of our species on the planet .
The discovery that upsets the history of "Homo sapiens"
The Misliya fossil does not look like a fragment of the upper left maxillary and the associated teeth. No complete skull or limb bones. The study of these remains, however, took a considerable time: the excavation of this cave began in 2001. The fossil was found the following season. But the international team set up to analyze these remains, date them and put them back in their archaeological context , took every precaution before publishing its results, Friday, January 26 in the journal Science
The dating was entrusted to three laboratories, in France , Israel and Australia , which worked with different methods. All converge around 180 000 years, except the direct dating of a tooth, which is 70 000 years old. "This uranium-thorium dating depends on the uptake of uranium by the teeth, which are a bit like sponges, but the problem is that we can not know if they absorbed this uranium at one time or gradually , says Hélène Valadas, the Laboratory science of climate and the environment (Gif-sur-Yvette), who participated in these datings.On the other hand, the same method is much more reliable for the mineral crust surrounding the fossil, which is 185,000 years old. "
"Sense of comfort"
The seniority of Misliya-1 - the official name of the fossil - is not in doubt. Nor is it part of an archaic version of our species: the shape of the teeth does not allow it to be confused with a Neanderthalian "or other middle-Pleistocene hominines of Europe , and it places it on the side of modern humans and close to that of Jebel Irhoud, " the researchers write. How did these men live, sheltered in these caves?
They had a sense of comfort, says archaeologist Mina Weinstein-Evron (University of Haifa) about traces of interwoven plants that are reminiscent of "mattresses" . "They hunted gazelles, aurochs, wild boars and found ostrich egg shells. We can imagine containers, or big omelets, she says. Sharp tools were used to extract tubers. There are also shells but we do not know if they were brought there by birds. As dessert, there were berries. In short, they took full advantage of their environment. "
What does their early presence mean in these African margins? "This discovery brings water to the mill of a model that is emerging on the African exit of our species, which is based on both genetic and climatic data" , rejoices Jean-Jacques Hublin (Institute Max Planck, Leipzig, and Collège de France), co-discoverer of the fossils of Djebel Irhoud. On the genetic side, some old DNA analyzes suggest that the first crosses between H. sapiens and his Neanderthal cousin, previously also present in the Levant region, could have occurred between 220,000 and 460,000 years ago. In this case, "the fossils of Homo sapiens of Misliya, Skuhl and Qafzeh could representrelatively late excursions of our species out of Africa, " says Chris Stringer and Julia Galway-Witham ( London Museum of Natural History ) in a commentary published in Science : other sapiens , yet to be discovered , would have preceded them.
Periods of "Green Sahara"
On the climate side, periods of "green Sahara", where the Middle East region was less arid, have followed one another over the last 500,000 years. "Maybe there was a trip out of Africa at one of those green episodes 300,000 years ago, and more recently, but these outings were not entirely successful until in a recent period, " says Jean-Jacques Hublin. Indeed, Homo sapiens is present in Europe only from 50 000 years, shortly before the disappearance of Neanderthal.
For Israel Hershkovitz, green episodes or not, "Israel has never been empty, at least in the coastal zone, where there have always been enough resources to subsist" . If Homo sapiens arrived only late in Europe, it was because it was not adapted to the colder climate that prevailed: "Why go there , while the road was open to the east, where the climate was more favorable? " This could explain the presence of 47 old human teeth 120, 000 years in the Tao-hsien Cave in China , announced in 2015.
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