I found the following article to be very interesting especially the following:

Excerpt:

Animal fossils at the site also revealed that these ancient people ate plenty of gazelle meat, as well as the occasional zebra, wildebeest and other game, including perhaps ostrich eggs, said Teresa Steele, a paleoanthropologist at the University of California, Davis. Cuts and breaks on long bones suggest that humans broke them open, likely to eat the marrow, she added. Other animal fossils found at the site include ones from porcupines, aurochs, hares, leopards, hyenas, lions, foxes, jackals, snakes, tortoises, snails and freshwater mollusks.

"I think the overall picture we're looking at from the archaeological data is a hunting encampment, a place where people passing across the landscape took shelter at night as they moved through the area in search of subsistence," McPherron said.

***
Oldest Fossils of Our Species Push Back Origin of Modern Humans

By Charles Q. Choi, Live Science Contributor (June 7, 2017)

The oldest bones of Homo sapiens were found at the archaeological site of Jebel Irhoud. Here, a view of the site showing the remaining deposits and people excavating them (center). Some 300,000 years ago, this site, which would have been a cave, was occupied by early hominins.
Credit: Shannon McPherron/MPI EVA Leipzig
The oldest known bones of our species, dating back around 300,000 years, have been discovered in a cave in Morocco.

The fossils — which belong to five individuals, including a teenager and a younger child — push back the origin of Homo sapiens by 100,000 years, scientists say. The fossils also suggest that our species originated throughout the entire African continent instead of mainly in its eastern corner as previous research had suggested.

The findings, described in two studies published in the June 8 issue of the journal Nature, represent the very roots of our species, the researchers said. As such, they help to clarify when and where Homo sapiens evolved from earlier lineages, such as Homo heidelbergensis or Homo rhodesiensis.

The five individuals may have been taking shelter in the Moroccan cave while hunting, possibly for gazelle or wildebeest, in what may have been a green Sahara. Though their faces looked a lot like ours do today, the individuals discovered in Morocco had smaller versions of a brain region called the cerebellum and an elongated braincase, the researchers said. [See Photos of the Fossilized Human Bones and Excavation Site]

Not Neanderthal

Archaeologists uncovered the human fossils, including a partial skull and a lower jaw, during excavations at the archaeological site of Jebel Irhoud in Morocco that began in 2004. But the site has a much earlier excavation history: Scientists first found some of the remains of these same individuals, along with stone tools, in the 1960s during mining operations. Those fossils were originally dated as about 40,000 years old and were considered to come from an African form of Neanderthal.

The excavation area is visible as a dark notch a little more than halfway down the ridge line sloping to the left in this image of the archaeological site of Jebel Irhoud in Morocco.
Credit: Shannon McPherron/MPI EVA Leipzig
However, subsequent research cast doubts on whether those fossils were 40,000-year-old Neanderthal bones. For example, the excavations that collected the fossils did not make it clear which layers of earth the bones were found in, which makes their age uncertain, said Shannon McPherron, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and a co-author of one of the new studies. [Image Gallery: Our Closest Human Ancestor]

In addition, before the 1980s, any human fossils that were about 40,000 years old and had primitive features, such as strong brow ridges, were often labeled as Neanderthal, whereas they might not be labeled that way today, said Jean-Jacques Hublin, a paleoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and co-lead author of one of the new studies.

The new analyses revealed that all of the fossils recovered from the site came from at least five individuals — three adults, one adolescent and one 7- to 8-year-old child, Hublin said. Those individuals date back about 285,000 to 350,000 years — much older than 40,000 years.

"These dates were a big 'wow,' I would say. We realized this site was much older than anyone could have imagined," Hublin told Live Science. "This material represents the very root of our species — the oldest specimens ever found in Africa or elsewhere."

They looked like us

In one study, computer models and hundreds of 3D X-ray measurements of the fossils suggested that numerous features of the face, jaw and teeth were almost indistinguishable from those of modern-day humans. Their faces were those "of people you could cross on the street today," Hublin told Live Science.

Two views of a composite reconstruction of the earliest known Homo sapiens fossils from the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco.

However, the braincase was rather elongated, resembling that of more archaic human lineages. Together, the anatomical features of these newly discovered fossils suggest "a rather more complex picture for the emergence of our species than previously thought, with different parts of the anatomy evolving at different rates — some fixed quite early in a modern way, and others taking a longer time to reach the modern condition," Hublin said.

Dating crystals

In the other new study, researchers analyzed flint tools found alongside the fossils. At one point in the distant past, these stone artifacts were heated by flame, perhaps when people there lit fires that inadvertently burned discarded flint tools scattered on or buried in the ground underneath, McPherron told Live Science.

Crystals within these artifacts gave off light when the researchers heated them, and the amount of light they gave off was related to how much time had passed since they were last heated. This analytical technique, known as thermoluminescence dating, suggested the site was about 300,000 to 350,000 years old.

"Well-dated sites of this age are exceptionally rare in Africa, but we were fortunate that so many of the Jebel Irhoud flint artifacts had been heated in the past," geochronology expert Daniel Richter, who was the lead author of the fossil-dating study when he was at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, said in a statement. (Richter is now at Freiberg Instruments GmbH.)

Moreover, Richter and his colleagues directly calculated the age of a human jawbone found at the site. Radioactive isotopes found within a tooth indicated that the jaw was as old as thermoluminescence dating suggested it was.
The scientists were not able to recover genetic data from these fossils because the heat and the age of the remains destroyed the DNA, Hublin said. Still, the elongated, primitive nature of the braincase revealed a number of facts about the biology of these ancient H. sapiens. For example, they had a smaller cerebellum — the brain region that helps coordinate muscle activity — than modern humans do, Hublin said.
Previous research suggested that a series of genetic mutations that play roles in brain development and the connection of different brain regions emerged in H. sapiens after the ancestors of modern humans split from extinct lineages such as the Neanderthals and the Denisovans, Hublin said. "This maybe explains the gradual changes in the braincase that we see that distinguish our lineage," he said. [Human Origins: How Hominids Evolved (Infographic)]

Animal fossils at the site also revealed that these ancient people ate plenty of gazelle meat, as well as the occasional zebra, wildebeest and other game, including perhaps ostrich eggs, said Teresa Steele, a paleoanthropologist at the University of California, Davis. Cuts and breaks on long bones suggest that humans broke them open, likely to eat the marrow, she added. Other animal fossils found at the site include ones from porcupines, aurochs, hares, leopards, hyenas, lions, foxes, jackals, snakes, tortoises, snails and freshwater mollusks.
"I think the overall picture we're looking at from the archaeological data is a hunting encampment, a place where people passing across the landscape took shelter at night as they moved through the area in search of subsistence," McPherron said.

Garden of Eden

Until now, the oldest H. sapiens fossils were found in eastern Africa, from the site of Omo Kibish in Ethiopia, suggesting that this was where our species originated. But now, these newfound 300,000-year-old fossils from northern Africa suggest that our species might not have evolved in a single area in Africa. Rather, these findings — in combination with a 260,000-year-old partial skull from Florisbad, South Africa, that a 1996 study suggested might have been from H. sapiens — reveal that our species might have evolved across all of Africa, the researchers said.

"If there is a Garden of Eden, it is Africa; it is the size of Africa," Hublin said. "Our model is one where there was probably the evolution of different populations of H. sapiens in different parts of Africa. Sometimes, there was some kind of isolation between them, but in other periods, they were connected when the environment changed — 'green Sahara' periods happened several times. During these periods of connection, we think there were exchanges of innovations, and also exchanges of genes."

One "green Sahara" period may have occurred between about 300,000 and 330,000 years ago, Hublin said. "This means grasslands over the Sahara. Rivers. Huge lakes, like those in Germany, in size. Fauna such as elephants and zebra. All over a geographic domain that is absolutely gigantic — the Sahara is the size of the United States," Hublin said. "These periods happened again and again, probably playing a role in what we think were episodes of connection and exchanges between different populations of H. sapiens."
***

Just happened to read the NYT article on this. Amazing stuff.

I thought the oldest fossil of our species was Ray Atkinson.... who ropes and posts here.

As methods and techniques continue to improve more will be learned and discovered concerning the history of the earliest hominid species on Earth.

quote:

Originally posted by Cajun1956:
I found the following article to be very interesting especially the following:

Excerpt:

Animal fossils at the site also revealed that these ancient people ate plenty of gazelle meat, as well as the occasional zebra, wildebeest and other game, including perhaps ostrich eggs, said Teresa Steele, a paleoanthropologist at the University of California, Davis. Cuts and breaks on long bones suggest that humans broke them open, likely to eat the marrow, she added. Other animal fossils found at the site include ones from porcupines, aurochs, hares, leopards, hyenas, lions, foxes, jackals, snakes, tortoises, snails and freshwater mollusks.
***

You mean they weren't vegans in hemp sandals? Huh.

And I bet they didn't sit around a campfire singing kumbaya....

I thought that the world was 5,000 years old.

Nancy Pelosi.
Cal

quote:

Originally posted by Fjold:
I thought that the world was 5,000 years old.

Love people that have that belief. They don't seem to recipocate that love though.

Even the Catholic Church has put out statements that where God and science differ, the bible is misunderstood.

Each year in South Africa (the cradle of humankind) I pick up artifacts on private property that date 1.5 - 2 million years BP. These true "Ape men" made simple cutting, shaving and crushing tools out of flint as they processed flora and fauna. This year I found 1/2 of a Bushman war club, which dates hundreds of thousands of years later.

Science has two major streams - discovery and invention.

Social science theories are a result of philosophies, logic, observation and testing hypothesis. Physical / natural sciences also use similar methods but experiments and tests are more common in establishing evidence, facts etc.

The limitations of science are that what is not discovered does not exist & is therefore considered an imagination or fake. The first duck billed platypus taken to England was deemed a fake!

Paleontology & archeology are sciences of discovery. Now here is the problem of limitation - it is easier to discover stuff that are easier to find, easier to access or easier to see.

Ancient ruins in South American and Asian jungles are far more difficult to find / see than those in sub Saharan Africa.

How do we know if more undiscovered ruins (older) are not awaiting discovery in other parts of the world. How about vast tracts of land in the Arabian sea and south of India that used to be dry land 6000 to 10000 years ago? How about ancient historical (written records) cities in the region?

Even the widely accepted theory of Aryan civilization having moved from Central Asia to India is now being challenged. Why do we not find similar civilizations & languages outside the subcontinent? There are some who now argue that Sanskrit is actually an Indian language (younger than Tamil) & not from Central Asia at all - again no evidence of links in other regions.

The Germans are true intellectuals in these fields of rigorous methodical science.

Thanks for posting Cajun.