Three papers, published together in Science today, add up to a paradigm-shoving conclusion: Key aspects of what we think of as modern human behavior evolved more than 300,000 years ago, a radical revision to the evolutionary timeline.
To understand the significance of the trio of studies, let’s take a brisk walk through recent changes in our understanding of human evolution. For decades, the consensus was that Homo sapiens evolved around 200,000 years ago in Africa, with anatomically modern humans emerging 100,000 years ago and leaving their ancestral continent around 50,000 years ago.
In the past few years, however, a series of surprising fossil finds, as well as advanced genetic analysis, have smashed that old paradigm like an angry Hulk.
The new picture of human evolution just emerging is that our species is more than 300,000 years old and left Africa much earlier than we thought, beginning at least 120,000 years ago and possibly as early as 200,000 years ago. Genetic analysis suggests our species may be even older, and was already interbreeding with Neanderthals, up to 470,000 years ago.
