2023-10-13 11:50:05
And multidisciplinary international team led by researchers from the University of Vigo and from the Sapienza University of Rome (Italy) has just presented the rthese oldest known until the moment of the species Standing man, belonging to an individual whom they called Garba.
It is the fossilized fragment of a infant jaw, which was found years ago in the so-called Garba IV site, in Melka Kunture (Ethiopia), but it has not been until now that it has been able to be identified as belonging to the species Standing man.
Your dating advances the appearance of Standing man and of the acheulean technology two million years ago, according to a scientific article that has just been published by the magazine Science.
These results represent “a change in the panorama of human evolution“, since it places “the first form of hominid with fully human features” at about “2.06 million years ago” and places “the origin of Acheulean technology, 1.95 million years ago,” he explains. Eduardo Mendez Quintas from the University of Vigo, member of the Archeology, Antiquity and Territory Study Group and professor at the Faculty of History of the Ourense campus.
With the appearance of the Garba dental remains, a diagnostic element is now available that allows for the first time to establish the maximum antiquity of Homo erectus in Africa 2.06 million years ago.
With the fossil remains that had been found so far, as detailed by the archaeologist, there were no diagnostic elements that could precisely date the appearance of the Standing man in Africa, although it was estimated that this should be 1.8 million years ago.
With the appearance of Garba’s dental remains, Méndez points out, there is now a diagnostic element which “allows for the first time to establish the maximum age of the Standing man in Africa 2.06 million years ago.”
The research has also made it possible to formulate hypothesis about how, among the different types of hominids located on the African continent, this species of Homothat developed “in the cold Ethiopian highlands and not in the warm Rift Valley“, could be the one who then gave the jump out of Africawell it was already adapted to cold weather conditions of the new territories.
Analysis of a mandibular fragment
Melka Kunture is located on the banks of the Awash Riverbetween the 2,000-2,200 meters above sea level. According to the authors of the work, its recognized sedimentary sequence covers about two million years and preserves archaeological sites characteristic of industrial complexes. Olduvayense, Achelense and of the Middle Stone Age.
This circumstance makes the enclave one of the main sequences of the African continent to understand the cultural evolution of the last two million years. In fact, the analyzes of this site are being carried out since 1963 and, currently, they are developed with the coordination of the Spanish-Italian team in the archaeological area of Melka Kunture and Balchit (MKB), under the direction of Margherita MussiMéndez himself and Joaquín Panera from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).
Illustrated reconstruction of ‘Garba’, with detail of the position of the mandibular fragment and the teeth analyzed. / Illustration by Diego Rodríguez-Robredo
One of the main enclaves of Melka Kunture is, precisely, the site of Garba IVexcavated at different times and extension and which has brought together a large set of stone toolsbones of large mammals and human remains.
The scientists indicate that the age of these different sedimentary levels was established through a combination of numerical argon (40Ar/39Ar) dating from volcanic tuffs y paleomagnetic. Specifically, they detail, the paleomagnetic event of Olduvai (dated on the global scale between 1.95-1.77 million years) and this allows us to place its chronology at about two million years.
The Garba mandibular fragment preserves two baby teeth on the outside, but these are not very representative for identification. The permanent teeth were inside the bone
In one of the deepest levels of this site, from 2.06 million years ago, was where the mandibular fragment of Garba was located, a child individual of 2-3 years of age, which the research team (in the absence of data to know your sex) prefers to mention like a girl.
“The mandibular fragment of Garba preserves on the outside two baby teeth, but these, as they are not definitive, are not very representative for identification at the species level. The permanent teeth, and therefore more significant, were inside the bone,” reports Méndez.
The appearance of Homo erectus on the evolutionary scene represented a substantial acceleration in the process of diffusion of human populations inside and outside of Africa.
To know its characteristics, the jaw was analyzed at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble (France). “The data obtained for the permanent teeth are very significant: they confirm the assignment of Garba to the taxon of Standing man and they make it the exemplary oldest in the world paleoanthropological record”says the expert.
Expansion out of Africa
“The appearance on the evolutionary scene of Standing man assumed a substantial acceleration in the process of diffusion of human populations inside and outside Africa and, therefore, it is the first human species to leave the African continent, just over 1.8 million years ago,” he maintains.
The date and area of Africa in which this taxon initially developed, he adds, was under discussion, since it was estimated that its initial appearance would be around 1.9-1.8 million years ago, but was not definitively established.
The most developed physical conditions of the Standing man (compared to those of other early specimens of the genus HomoLike the A handy man) would have allowed them, as described by the researcher, to implement new and more sophisticated technical solutions, among which the invention of the Acheulean technology and ability to use fire.
Acheulean technology, comments Méndez, “is the name we attribute to the stone tools that the Standing man Africans and that would end up expanding to almost the entire world.” This is characterized by “the manufacture of large flakesfrom which they were carved more complex toolslike bifaces (almond-shaped).”
The appearance of this Acheulean technology was established around 1.8-1.7 million years ago in some sites at the bottom of the Rift valley and, based on this data, this new technology would progressively expand throughout the rest of the African continent, to later give the jump to Eurasia.
“The new data obtained at the Garba IV site show that the first Standing man they use a most basic technology (cores and flakes), which we call ‘olduvayense’. Now, “immediately, around 1.95 million years, they began to manufacture the new Acheulean technology,” indicates the researcher. This supposes “an advance of almost 300,000 years in the appearance of this technology on a global scale and in an unexpected geographic area,” he emphasizes.
The data provided by the Garba IV site and collected in this article, in the words of the research team, “make us rethink some pre-established ideas about the appearance of the genus Homo in the african scale”.
The first and fundamental one, Méndez emphasizes, is that the emergence of the taxon “it is not related with the warm ecosystems and open sheetbut has its origin in a temperate environment and a more diversified ecosystemlike the one we observed in the ethiopian highlands”, from where “this species would radiate to the rest of the continent.”
The genesis of Standing man in a temperate ecosystem is a relevant fact to understand its successful expansion out of Africa and its “rapid diffusion in these new geographical areas was favored by the similarity between these new ecological scenarios and those existing in the African highlands.”
In this sense, “we can conceive this African region as a laboratory‘where a new human taxon adapted to temperate Eurasian conditions was created,’ the archaeologists conclude.
Illustration of Garba with his mother in the Ethiopian highland environment 2,000,000 years ago. / Diego Rodriguez Robredo
Reference:
Mussi, M. et al. “Early Homo erectus lived at high altitudes and produced both Oldowan and Acheulean tools”. Science (2023)
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