Mankind May Have Come From Europe, Not Africa

According to a bold new conclusion, the last common ancestor we shared with chimps may have come from Europe rather than Africa. While East Africa is generally assumed to be the birthplace of mankind, this new study links our origins to ancient European apes discovered through Greek and Bulgarian fossils. Even though these findings are controversial, at the very least, the new evidence does cast earliest hominins from Africa in a new light.

Two fossils of an ape-like creature have been discovered in Bulgaria and Greece, with specimens dating back 7.2 million years. An international team of researchers discovered the 'Missing Link' in the Mediterranean region, with the last common ancestor of both chimpanzees and humans named Graecopithecus freybergi or ‘El Graeco' by scientists. This puts our ancestors in Europe 200,000 years before they were in Africa, challenging common perspectives on the origins of human history.

Even though Europe was an ape's paradise roughly 12 million years ago, researchers used to believe they were confined to Africa after environmental conditions deteriorated about 10 million years ago. That was until the 2012 discovery of an ape tooth from Bulgaria that was just 7 million years old, which shed new light onto the uncovering of a fossil jawbone found near Athens in 1944. Following a complementary analysis that investigated the local geology in Greece and Bulgaria at the time, scientists now believe that Graecopithecus split from the chimp evolutionary lineage a little earlier than 7.25 million years ago.

The research team analysed the two known specimens of Graecopithecus and used computer tomography to visualise the internal structures of the fossils. Researchers then discovered that the roots of the premolars were widely fused and shared additional dental root structures, features that are characteristic of modern humans, early humans, and several pre-humans. According to Professor David Begun, a University of Toronto paleoanthropologist and co-author of the study, "This dating allows us to move the human-chimpanzee split into the Mediterranean area."

According to Professor Nikolai Spassov, co-author from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, “This study changes the ideas related to the knowledge about the time and the place of the first steps of the humankind ... Graecopithecus is not an ape. He is a member of the tribe of hominins and the direct ancestor of homo ... The food of the Graecopithecus was related to the rather dry and hard savannah vegetation, unlike that of the recent great apes which are living in forests. Therefore, like humans, he has wide molars and thick enamel. To some extent this is a newly discovered missing link. But missing links will always exist, because evolution is infinite chain of subsequent forms. Probably El Graeco's face will resemble a great ape, with shorter canines."

Not everyone agrees with the implications of this finding, however, with David Alba from the Catalan Institute of Palaeontology in Barcelona not convinced by the idea that tooth roots alone can identify Graecopithecus as a hominin. While Alba and others agree that Graecopithecus is different from other ancient apes found in Europe, primates are particularly prone to evolving similar features independently. While Professor Begun and others involved in this study would surely disagree, some scientists are not ready to accept such big evolutionary claims.

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