Hominin footprints from 1 500 000-year-old deposits near Ileret in northern Kenya.

One of the features that serve to distinguish Modern Humans from our closest living relatives, the Great Apes, is an upright bipedal stance unlike that seen in any other Primate. Based upon analysis of fossil skeletons, it is thought that this gait and posture appeared in the earliest members of the genus Homo, with earlier Australopithicene Hominins thought likely to have had a more Ape-like gait. However this is based almost entirely upon analysis of the bones of the legs and pelvis, with foot bones extremely rare (a set of eleven isolated foot bones from 1.8 million-year-old deposits at Dmasini in Georgia have been attributed to Homo erectus, but beyond this the foot bones of early Homo are unknown). One method that has proved extremely useful when studying non-Hominin terrestrial animals is analysis of preserved footprints, which can reveal a great deal about both the posture and gait of the animals, however fossil Hominin footprints are also extremely rare; a set of 3.7 million year old footprints from Laetoli in Tanzania have been attributed to Australopithicua afarensis, but footprints assignable to early members of the genus Homo are extremely rare.

In a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports on 12 July 2016, a team of scientists led by Kevin Hatala of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology at The George Washington University describe a series of Hominin footprints from the 1 500 000-year-old Ileret Tuff Complex in northern Kenya, and the implications that can be derived from these.

The tracks comprise 97 discrete footprints from five sites, representing 23 trackways made by 15-23 individuals (depending on whether some individuals made more than one trackway). The tracks were laid down in soft mud rich in volcanic ash close to Lake Turkana and covered by fresh sediment within a few hours of their formation. The footprints range from 20.5 cm to over 30 cm in length.

Schematic maps of excavated footprint surfaces at sites FE3 and FwJj14E. Map of the Ileret area (lower left) shows the locations of sites FE3 and FwJj14E, marked by black stars. Schematic maps of the excavated surfaces at FE3 (top left) and the FwJj14E Upper Footprint Layer (right) show the presence of multiple trackways across each of these surfaces. Print size analyses indicate that the groups of individuals represented at each site consist of predominantly males. Multiple trackways at FwJj14E show parallel directional movement and similar preservation states, suggesting that they could represent a group traveling together. Note that the schematic map of the FwJj14E surface has been rotated relative to North for visualization purposes. Solid red lines mark borders of the current excavations, and the same geological layers that preserve footprints are known to extend beyond these borders. Dashed red lines indicate the finite edge of the preserved surface, as areas beyond these lines have been lost due to erosion. The schematic map of the Ileret area was created by Neil Roach, using a map generated in ArcGIS software version 10.2. Hatala et al. (2016).

Based upon the size of the footprints the tracks are thought to have been made by individuals with an average adult body mass (the smallest set of tracks are thought to have come from a child, with all the others thought to be adults) of 48.9 kg. This is comparable to the average adult body mass of the modern Daasanach people (52.6 kg), who inhabit southwestern Ethiopia, southeast South Sudan and northwest Kenya, including the area around Lake Turkana, and also comparable to the estimated size derived for a series of 800 000-year-old footprints from Happisburgh in Norfolk, England, attributed to Homo antecessor, and considered to be the oldest-known Hominin footprints outside of Africa (48-52 kg).

1.5 Ma hominin tracks from Ileret, Kenya. Representative images of hominin tracks uncovered in the Ileret area between 2007 and 2014. These tracks come from five different sites within  about 1.5 km of each other. Some tracks show deterioration and overprinting, while many preserve fine detail, indicating that they were rapidly hardened and covered with sediment. No two sites represent the same continuous surface, as all come from different stratigraphic levels within the Ileret tuff complex. The total sample includes 97 hominin tracks produced by at least 20 different individuals. Hatala et al. (2016).

Three Hominin species are thought to have been present in the Turkana Basin 1 500 000 years ago, Paranthropus boisei, Homo habalis and Homo erectus. Of these only Homo erectus is thought to have been large enough to have made the Ileret footprints, the other species being considerably smaller. Morphological analysis of the footprints suggested that the weight distribution on the foot and gait of the track-makers was similar to (but not identical to) that of habitually barefoot Daasanach individuals living in the area today, but quite different to that of the makers of the 3.7 million year old footprints at Laetoli in Tanzania (probably made by Australopithicua afarensis, and certainly by an Australopithecine rather than a member of the genus Homo).

Forefoot depth profiles of modern human and fossil hominin footprints. Boxplots compare regional depth profiles of modern human footprints (n = 490 footprints from 41 individuals) to those of the 1.5 Ma Ileret (n = 11 footprints from 8 trackways) and 3.7 Ma Laetoli (n = 5 footprints from 1 trackway) Hominin tracks. Top row represents depths across the toes while bottom row represents depths across the metatarsal heads. In each plot, medial is left and lateral is right. The image at far left shows the distribution of pressure including the path of the centre of pressure, plotted as a dashed black line, during a typical human walking step. The overall forefoot morphology of the Ileret tracks closely resembles that of human tracks and provides evidence of a human-like medial weight transfer. The Laetoli tracks are distinct from those of Modern Humans and the Ileret Hominins, and reflect a different pattern of foot biomechanics. Note that scales differ only for the purpose of better visualizing the variation within the relatively smaller fossil samples. In all boxplots, the box encloses the 25–75% interquartile range, the bold line represents the median, and the upper and lower whiskers extend to the largest and smallest observations within a distance of 1.5 times the interquartile range above and below the limits of the box. Hatala et al. (2016).

Homo erectus is thought to have shown far higher sexual dimorphism than Modern Humans (i.e. the difference in size between males and females was more pronounced), for which reason it was considered to assign sexes to the makers of the tracks. Using this methodology it was calculated that sixteen of the trackways (representing 8-16 individuals) were made by substantially larger, presumably male individuals (the alternative hypothesis, that all the individuals were female, representing the size range of female Homo erectus individuals, with larger male footprints not present, was deemed to be less likely). This does not rule out the possibility that some of the smaller, presumed female, footprints were made by smaller, possibly subadult, males.

This high proportion of male individuals (8-16 adult males in a group of 15-25 individuals) is remarkable, in that it is unlike the population structure of any known Primate species, or indeed Mammal of any kind, and is unlikely to represent a reproductively viable population. Hatala et al. suggest that this may indicate that the trackways were made not by an entire population but by a sub-set of that population travelling with a specific purpose. This may represent the division of labour amongst a hunter-gatherer society, something which is known in both Modern Human and Great Ape populations today, or possibly the patrolling of a border of a territory held by one group of individuals against incursions by members of another group, behaviour which is known in both Modern Humans and Chimpanzees, and which in both cases is carried out by smaller groups of individuals from within a larger population, with those smaller groups predominantly or exclusively made up of adult males.

See also...

Hominin rib from Sterkfontein Caves. Sterkfontein Caves is a palaeoarchaological excavation site about 40 km to the northwest of Johannesburg in Gauteng State, South Africa, which forms part of the Maropeng Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site has previously produced a...

A Hadrosaurid Dinosaur trackway from the Denali National Park in Alaska.                           The preserved tracks of ancient animals such as Dinosaurs can provide insights into their lifestyles and biology that could not be determined by examination of bones alone, although such data needs to be interpreted carefully. Such studies can potentially provide data on herding or other social...

Reconstructing the Paluxy River Dinosaur Chase Sequence.                                            In 1940 palaeontologist Roland Bird of the American Museum of Natural History in New York described and partially excavated a sequence of Dinosaur footprints along the Paluxy River at Glen Rose in Texas. In...

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The earliest evidence of fire use from million year old sediments in Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape Province?

It has been suggested that Homo erectus was adapted primarily to eat cooked foods, since it lacked the heavy jaws of earlier hominids, particularly the Australopithecines. Evidence of fire is ubiquitous in archaeological sights younger than about 400 000 years old, i.e. sights used by Neanderthals and modern humans, but the situation at older sights is less clear. Traces of fire have been reported at sights up to 1.5 million years old, but none of these is clear cut, with signs of reworking and uncertain dating. The oldest sights from which the use of fire can be confidently claimed are between 700 000 and 800 000 years old in the Middle East.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on 2 April 2012, Francesco Berna of the Department of Archaeology at Boston University announce the discovery of fire traces from a 1 million year old horizon in the Wonderwerk Cave in Northern Cape Province, South Africa.

Map showing the position of the Wonderwerk Cave. From Berna et al. (2012).

The Wonderwerk Cave is a phreatic tube (cave formed by pressurized water) through Precambrian dolostone (chemically altered limestone) in the Kuruman Hills of Northern Cape Province. It has been studied since the 1970s, and has a well understood stratigraphic sequence (chronology). It shows two stages of settlement an Oldovan stage (earliest stone age, generally between 2.6 and 1.7 million years ago, associated with Homo habilis) overlain by an Acheulean stage (a more advanced technology that appeared about 1.8 million years ago and which is associated with Homo erectus, and sometimes other members of the genus Homo).

Map of the Wonderwerk Cave. From Berna et al. (2012).

The fire remains were found on a horizon between two layers confidently dated to 1.27 and 0.98 million years old, and which is generally believed to be 1.07 million years old. The remains comprised fire altered plant and bone remains, and stone tools that had apparently been split from their parent rocks using fire.

The researchers were able to rule out reworking of the burned material at the site, and also spontaneous combustion of bat guano, which sometimes occurs in caves but which leaves distinct chemical signatures. They estimate from the extent to which bone samples were altered that the fires had reached temperatures of about 500°C, consistent with grass or leaf fires, but not the burning of wood. In addition they did not find remains of any wood (though this in itself is not proof of anything; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).

Bone samples from Excavation 1 (see the map of the Wonderwerk Cave, above). (A) shows signs of heating to in excess of 400°C, (B) has either not been heated, or has been heated to less than 400°C.

See also Trying to find Peking Man, The canine teeth of Australopithecus anamensis, Pleistocene rock carving from Brazil; possibly the oldest art in the Americas, 20 000 year old stone huts from Kharaneh in Eastern Jordan and Another look at the Canteen Kopje Skull.

Trying to find Peking Man.

Peking Man is a collective name given to a group of hominid fossils found at Zhoukoudian, near Beijing, between 1929 and 1937. This comprised remains from at least 15 individuals, assigned to the species Homo erectus, with an estimated age between 300 000 and 780 000 years old. In 1937 the invading Japanese army was drawing close to Zhoukoudian and the excavation was abandoned. The fossils were taken to the Peking Union Medical College, where in 1941 they were packed into crates in order to be evacuated to the United States. The plan was to ship the remains to the Fort Holcomb US Marine base near the port of Qinhaungdao, then ship them to America on board the SS President Harrison.

Reconstructed model of a Peking Man skull. University of Iowa.

Unfortunately the SS President Harrison was intercepted by a Japanese destroyer en route from Manila. The ship's master elected to scupper it by running it onto a small island, rather than allowing it to fall into enemy hands; the crew were captured, forced to work on refloating the ship, and eventually ended up in POW camps in Japan. Fort Holcomb and its Marine garrison were forced to surrender within a few weeks.

The Peking Man fossils are known to have left the Peking Union Medical College, but after that their fate is unknown. They never reached the U.S., but it is unclear if they ever reached Fort Holcomb, and they have not been seen since the war, generally being presumed to have been destroyed.

A paper in the March edition of the South African Journal of Science by Lee Berger of the Institute of Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand and Wu Liu and Xiujie Wu of the Institute for Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, discuss a report of a possible sighting of the Peking Man fossils in 1947, and its implications for the recovery of the specimens.

The sighting was reported by Paul Bowen who contacted Lee Berger in 2010, about a story he had been told by his father, Richard Bowen. Richard Bowen served as a Marine at Fort Holcomb in 1947, when the camp was briefly re-occupied by the US. During this time the site was surrounded by Chinese Communist troops, and it seemed highly likely that hostilities would commence. The Marines responded to this by digging a large number of fox-holes, and during the digging of one of these, apparently, came across a chest full of what appeared to be human remains, which the Marines found slightly distasteful and promptly reburied. Eventually the US garrisons in China were recalled to America without any fighting, where Mr Bowen eventually heard the story of the missing Peking Man fossils.

It seemed quite plausible that in the confusion of the 1941 siege of Fort Holcomb the chests were buried for later retrieval, but that nobody who knew where survived till the end of the war.

Mr Bowen senior was able to identify the approximate site where the chest was reburied in 1947, using old military maps and Google Earth, allowing the team to visit the site with a local historian. While the site had been re-developed, it was covered only by low-rise warehousing and parking lots, so there seems a reasonable chance that if the Peking Man remains were buried deep enough, they might have survived intact.

Top: 1938 military map of Fort Holcomb and the surrounding area. The arrow indicates the position of a railway bridge, and the box is the site of the enlisted men's barracks, close to which the box was buried. Bottom Google Earth map of the same area. Berger et al. (2012).

The area is due for re-developing in the near future, with larger buildings, which will require deeper foundations. Given the potential importance of the fossils the local Cultural Heritage Office have agreed to monitor the development closely, in the hope that Peking Man can be recovered.

See also The canine teeth of Australopithecus anamensis, Pleistocene rock carving from Brazil; possibly the oldest art in the Americas, 20 000 year old stone huts from Kharaneh in Eastern Jordan, Another look at the Canteen Kopje Skull and Neanderthals using red ochre at least 200 000 years ago.

A re-evaluation of the Iwo Eleru skull.

Iwo Eleru is an archaeological site in southeast Nigeria, which comprised a rock shelter containing a number of stone tools and a single human skeleton. It was excavated in 1965 by a team lead by Thorstan Shaw of the University of Ibadan. The findings were published in 1971 in a paper in the journal Man (since 1995 replaced by The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute) by Don Brothwell of the Natural History Museum and Shaw. The initial study made morphometric analysis of the skull which suggested that Iwo Eleru man was similar to modern West Africans, but with some archaic features. Morphometric analysis is a method by which a large number of measurements are taken of a fossil, then compared to similar fossils within the same group in order to determine affinities. A radio-carbon date was established for charcoal associated with the skeleton, which gave a age of approximately 13 000 years.

The location of Iwo Eleru and the reconstructed skull.

This month a team lead by Katerina Harvati of the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoecology, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen published a paper in the journal PLoS One in which they re-examine the Iwo Eleru skull and provide a new morphometric analysis based upon digital measurements of the skull (the original study used calipers, the best technology available at the time) and a uranium-thorium date for the site.

Despite the extensive studies that have been made of the origins of humanity in Africa, comparatively little is known about human populations there during the Late Pleistocene, and even less for West Africa. For the purpose of the study the Iwo Eleru skull has been compared to a number of neanderthal, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo erectus, modern and other Pleistocene African and Near Eastern skulls. The other African and Near Eastern Pleistocene skulls were the two skulls from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, currently dated at 160 000 years old, the Ngaloba skull from Laetoli in Tanzania, currently dated at 120 000 years old, two skulls from Qafzeh in Israel, currently dated at between 80 000 and 120 000 years old, the Singa skull from Jebel Irhoud in eastern Sudan, currently dated at between 87 000 and 127 000 and the Skhul skull from Mount Carmel in Israel, currently dated at 100 000 years old.

The morphometric analysis produced by Harvati et al. produced to distinct groups of skulls, one containing the archaic humans (neanderthals, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo erectus) and one containing the modern humans, with some of the Pleistocene African and Near Eastern skulls falling into these groups and some intermediate.

One of the Qafzeh skulls fell consistently within the archaic group, and the Skhul skull was consistently either in or close to this group (more than one analysis was run, since none of these skulls is complete). The other skulls were, depending on the analysis, either in or close to the modern set, or intermediate between the two - with the exception of Iwo Eleru, which was consistently intermediate between the two groups.

This suggests that Iwo Eleru is not a fully modern human, and that therefore more archaic humans can be thought to have persisted in West Africa later than was previously thought. However Harvati et al. do not consider Iwo Eleru to be distinctive enough to classify it as a separate species, preferring to consider it to be an archaic form of modern human (Homo sapiens).

Until comparatively recently the idea of archaic humans surviving as recently as the Late Pleistocene would have been highly controversial. However the recent discoveries of Homo floresiensis in 2003, a distinct species of humans that survived as recently as 13 000 years ago on Flores Island in Indonesia and the Denisovan people in 2010, a species of human living in Siberia around 40 000 years ago, make this rather less surprising. Instead this extends our knowledge of archaic human forms that lived alongside us until quite recently into a new area.

The skull of Homo floresiensis, a 1.1 m hominid from Indonesia.

The Uranium-thorium date established for the bones gave an age of between 11 700 and 16 300 years old, consistent with the original dating.

See also Ancient Ape skull found in Uganda, Rock carving on the Gower Peninsula, Out of Africa(?) and Mammals on Sciency Thoughts YouTube.

Out of Africa(?)

There are currently two main theories about the evolution and global migration of modern man.

The Out of Africa Hypothesis postulates that modern man evolved in Africa, with the first true members of our species appearing in Africa between 500 000 and 200 000 years ago, and then migrating out of the continent some time after 125 000 years ago, replacing all other species of humans.

The Out of Africa Model.

The Muli-Regional Hypothesis postulates that various species of humans spread around the globe about 2 million years ago, and that these separate species evolved into modern races of humans.

Different theories are part of the normal run of science, but when human origins are involved they can become very political. The two theories have very different implications as to how closely related we all are. Either we all share a common ancestry within the last half a million years and racial differences are merely superficial local adaptations to climate, or the different modern races are so distantly related they are nearly different species. However we cannot dismiss a scientific theory because we do not like its implications, but should consider the evidence for and against rival theories and try to make decisions based upon this.

The Out of Africa theory has the backing of the majority of palaeoanthropologists (scientists who study human origins). It was initially proposed by Charles Darwin in his 1871 book Descent of Man; a single human origin fitted with his theory of natural selection so this part of the theory is not overly surprising, what is surprising is that he postulated an African origin for mankind. At the time most scholars placed the origin of man in the Middle East, based upon biblical scholarship, the best evidence they were aware of (fossil humans were more-or-less unknown at this time). Darwin based his ideas on the African origin of man upon his (new and controversial) idea that we are descended from African apes. This was still at best a guess; the natural world was not as well documented in the eighteenth century as it is now, so it would not have been a great surprise if more human-like apes had subsequently been found somewhere in the jungles of Asia.

Charles Darwin, who's controversial views on the origin of man have stood the test of time.

The Multi-Regional Hypothesis as we currently know it did not exist in the eighteenth century, but it had its parallels. In the eighteenth century it was generally assumed that the different races of men were different species. When Linnaeus described humans he gave the different races different specific names; Homo sapiens (the thinking man) only applied to Europeans. This was convenient politically. It could be assumed that the biblical tales were about white people, when Jesus spoke of love for ones fellow man he obviously meant white men. Scholars seriously argued that Africans did not actually have souls; whatever the case it was clearly OK to enslave them; either they were animals, or an inferior sort of humans placed on Earth by god to do manual labour for white people. When Jean-Baptiste LaMark proposed his theory of evolution in 2009 he did not go as far as to say that different humans were different species, but his theories could definitely be read that way. LaMark thought that animals evolved by striving to improve themselves, actively trying to evolve towards a platonic ideal. Obviously in this scheme of things humans (and European humans at that) were the pinnacle of evolution, to which all other animals would strive. This could be interpreted to mean that different groups of humans had completely different origins. This theory did not even imply that apes were more closely related to humans than clams; species were more similar to humans because they were more strong willed than other species.

Jean-Baptiste LaMark's ideas on evolution seem ridiculous now, but were advanced for his time.

Since Darwin's time many fossil humans have been found, and a variety of human species named and placed in a number of genera. Most of these have been restricted entirely to Africa, but other members of the modern genus Homo have also been found in Asia and Europe. Nobody any longer disputes that the first humans arose in Africa, but it is disputed how long ago the ancestors of modern humans left Africa and diverged from one another.

Scientists have studied the genes and chromosomes of modern humans and come to some remarkable conclusions. Chromosomes have large chunks of non-coding DNA (sometimes called junk DNA). This DNA does not produce any proteins, so if it undergoes mutations this does not have any effect, good or bad. So while coding DNA (the DNA which codes for proteins) is subject to natural selection - beneficial mutations will quickly spread through a population, harmful ones will quickly be eliminated - non-coding DNA is not. Mutations can therefore accumulate at a steady rate, and this rate can be used to judge the time since different lineages diverged. This is known as the molecular clock.

Chromosomes come in pairs, and in each generation the genes on those pairs are recombined, forming a new chromosome with a combination of DNA from each parent, this can make the molecular clock method hard to interpret. However humans (and all mammals) have two sets of DNA which do not recombine; the male sex chromosomes Y, which is passed from father to son and never recombines with its partner the X chromosome (X chromosomes do recombine in women, so these are less useful), and mitochondrial DNA; DNA found outside the nucleus in organelles called mitochondria, and which are always inherited through the female line. It is therefore easy to assess the rate at which these chromosomes have accumulated mutations, making them a prime target for scientists interested in tracing the divergence of human populations.

When scientists examined the X chromosome they came to the conclusion that all humans had a common female ancestor approximately 160 000 years ago. This hypothetical female ancestor is sometimes known as the 'Mitochondrial Eve'. The Y-chromosomal DNA yielded even more surprising evidence, all male humans apparently shared a single male ancestor 60 000 years ago, sometimes called the 'Y-chromosomal Adam'.

This was not the end of the DNA story. Scientists were also able to analyze the entire human genome to look for diversity within different groups. By analyzing the DNA of thousands of volunteers from around the world it was possible to build up a rough family tree for humanity. This suggested that the greatest human diversity was found within African populations - all non-African populations, no matter what they look like - are comparatively closely related to one-another.

A family tree for the human race, based upon mitochondrial DNA

Evidence for the Multi-regional hypothesis is less solid. Some palaeoanthropologists claim that they can discern features on the skulls of ancient humans which resemble modern humans living in the same areas, and there have been claims (dubious) claims of recovered DNA from Neanderthals which suggests they might share some genes with modern Europeans which other ethnic groups lack.

Nevertheless the popular press has taken quite a liking to the Multi-Regional Hypothesis, and it is often reported as being of equal merit too, or even favored over, the Out of Africa Hypothesis. So when stories started appearing in the British media this week of a new paper being published that cast further doubts upon the Out of Africa Hypothesis, I was immediately suspicious.

Doubts over 'out of Africa' theory, Yahoo News, 29 June 2011.

'Out of Africa' theory thrown into doubt, Sunday Mercury, 30 June 2011.

Out of Africa? New theory throws doubt on assumption all humans evolved from the continent. Daily Mail, 30 June 2011.

The paper in question appeared in the journal Plos One and was by a team lead by Etty Indriati of the Laboratory of Bio- and Paleoanthropology at the Faculty of Medicine at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

It does not actually make any reference to either the Out of Africa Hypothesis, or the Multi-Regional Hypothesis, but provides a re-evaluation of the date of the 20 Meter Solo River Terrace, one of the 'Java Man' sites, where remains of the the presumed human ancestor Homo erectus was found. Homo erectus has been found in eastern Africa, Georgia in southeast Europe, Turkey, India, China, Vietnam and Java, though not all scientists accept that all these specimens belonged to the same species. Most of these finds are over a million years old, but a much younger date, possibly as recent as 35 000 years ago, has been suggested for the Solo River site.

A reconstruction of 'Java Man'; the dark part on the skull was actually discovered, everything else is speculation.

What Indriati et al. did was to re-date the sight of the Solo River finds using isotope analysis of ash layers. This works something like this:

Mineral crystals are formed in volcanoes as liquid magma cools and solidifies. Each mineral forms at a range of temperatures, and (importantly) contains known elements. Some of these elements are mildly radio-active; they decay over time to form new elements. Since these new elements have different chemical properties, they would not have been present in the original minerals. Thus, since the rate at which these elements decay is constant, it is possible to compare the ratio of the original element to the product element within a mineral crystal and produce a date for the rock.

The Solo River site is on a floodplane, the material which makes it up has been deposited by rivers, and shows some mixing of material. However horizons of volcanic material exist within it that are unmixed, they give a constant date reading, implying they were deposited by discrete volcanic episodes. Using these horizons Indriati et al. were able to come up with a date of slightly over half a million years for the sight.

A reconstruction of the Solo River site.

What this tells us is that Java man was not a contemporary, or near contemporary, of the earliest modern humans in the area, or of Neanderthal man in Europe, as has been suggested, but rather lived and died long before the earliest anatomically modern humans appeared in Africa (or anywhere else). This does not preclude the possibility of Homo erectus having lived in the area until much more recently, but it does leave us with no evidence of this. As such it tends to support, rather than cast doubt upon, the Out of Africa theory.