Homo Sapiens migrated to Europe at least 210,000 years ago

[shunyadragon]

Recent evaluation of aa skull found in Greece demonstrates Homo Sapiens migrated to Greece before Neanderthals.

Source: http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/anthropology/apidima-2-skull-early-homo-sapiens-07377.html

Enigmatic Skull Found in Greece Suggests Early Homo sapiens Reached Europe 210,000 Years Ago

A 210,000-year-old partial skull found in southern Greece about four decades ago has been identified as the earliest example of anatomically modern Homo sapiens discovered outside the African continent. The discovery, described in a paper in the journal Nature, pushes back the known date of our species in Europe by more than 150,000 years.

An artist’s reconstruction of an anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Image credit: Peter Schouten.
An artist’s reconstruction of an anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Image credit: Peter Schouten.

“Our results suggest that at least two groups of people lived in the Middle Pleistocene in what is now southern Greece: an early Homo sapiens population, followed by a Neanderthal population,” said Professor Katerina Harvati, a researcher at the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen, Germany.

Professor Harvati and colleagues re-examined two fossilized human skulls discovered in 1978 in Apidima Cave, Mani, southern Greece.

They virtually reconstructed both specimens, dubbed Apidima 1 and Apidima 2, and conducted detailed comparative description and geometric morphometric analyses.

They also used U-series radiometric methods to date the fossils and the surrounding sediments.

“Apidima 2 is about 170,000 years old. We could tell that it was a Neanderthal,” Professor Harvati said.

“Surprisingly, Apidima 1 is even older, about 210,000 years old, but has no Neanderthal features. Rather, we revealed a mixture of modern human and primitive features, indicating an early Homo sapiens.”

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