The world's oldest humans: proof we came from Africa
Scientists hail discovery of 160,000-year-old remains in
Ethiopian desert as breakthrough in search for answers 
to evolution puzzle

Professor White, one of the world's most prominent anthropologists,
yesterday unveiled the fruits of his latest research - three 
well- preserved skulls belonging to the earliest members of our
own species, Homo sapiens.

The three individuals, two adults and one child, lived about 
160,000 years ago, making their skulls about 60,000 years older
than the previous oldest fossils of anatomically "modern" humans.
  
Professor White, who is based at the University of California,
Berkeley, said that the three very probably belonged to the group
of ancient humans from which everyone alive today is descended.
 
"With these new crania [skulls] we can now see what our direct 
ancestors looked like," said Professor White, whose study is 
published in the journal Nature.

The date of the fossils is important because it matches precisely
the age at which Homo sapiens is said to have diverged from its 
ancestral line as calculated from the genetic analysis of human DNA.
"We've lacked intermediate fossils between pre-humans and modern 
humans, between 100,000 and 300,000 years ago, and that's where 
these fossils fit," Professor White said. "Now, the fossil record
meshes with the molecular evidence."

A key anatomical feature of the skulls was their similarity to 
skulls of modern humans and the distinct separation from other 
species of hominids, such as Neanderthal man, Dr Howell said. 
"These well-dated and anatomically diagnostic Herto fossils are 
unmistakably non-Neanderthal. These fossils show that near-humans
had evolved in Africa long before the European Neanderthals
disappeared," Dr Howell said.

"They thereby demonstrate conclusively there was never a Neanderthal
stage in human evolution," he added.

Berhane Asfaw of the Rift Valley Research Service in Addis Ababa,
who is another member of Professor White's team, said the three 
Herto skulls finally answer the question. "These fossilised skulls
from Herto show modern humans were living at around 160,000 years 
ago with full-fledged Homo sapiens features. The hypothesis is now
tested [and] we can conclusively say Neanderthals had nothing to do
with modern humans. They went extinct."

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
12 June 2003

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=414672

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