Ancient skull discovery suggests modern humans are hundreds of years older than we thought

A newly-reconstructed million-year-old skull could drastically rewrite our understanding of when and where modern humans first emerged.

Analysis of the fossil, found in China, suggests Homo sapiens, our species, split off from its ancestors 400,000 years earlier than previously thought – and possibly in Asia, not Africa.

The skull was found in Hubei Province in 1990 but was too badly crushed to be properly understood at the time.

Researchers were able to determine its age and assumed it belonged to Homo erectus, the first large-brained humans and an ancestor of Homo sapiens.

Previous evidence indicated Homo erectus evolved and split around 600,000 years ago into Homo sapiens, the Neanderthals, and a mysterious group known as the Denisovans.

But recent developments in scanning and virtual reconstruction techniques allowed a team of Chinese researchers and Prof Chris Stringer of London’s Natural History museum to restore the skull’s shape.

Named Yunxian 2, the skull was then compared to more than a hundred other human fossils.

Prof Stringer said: ‘Our research reveals that Yunxian 2 is not Homo erectus, but an early member of the longi clade and linked to the Denisovans.’

Homo longi is a recently discovered species or subspecies of ancient human named after the famous ‘Dragon Man’ skull found in Northeast China.

Some evidence points to it overlapping with – or perhaps being the same as – the Denisovans, who were discovered in 2010 but have been difficult to classify.

They roamed a large swathe of Asia, in some places interbreeding with Homo sapiens but mostly keeping to themselves.

The Yunxian 2 discoery ‘changes a lot of thinking because it suggests that by one million years ago, our ancestors had already split into distinct groups,’ Prof Stringer continued.

This points to a ‘much earlier and more complex human evolutionary split than previously believed’, he added.

The skull appears to be that of a man between 30 and 40 years old, according to the team.

He is thought to have the largest brain of any early human species of that era.

His face was large, with flat cheekbones and a large nose, but did not stick out as much as Neanderthals.

Paleoanthropologist Xijun Ni of Fudan University, who led the study published Thursday, told the Reuters news agency: ‘The Homo longi clade was quite successful in Asia, occupying a very large area with diverse environments for more than one million years.

‘They probably lived in small, isolated groups and had little interaction with other groups.

‘Consequently, they exhibit considerable morphological diversity.’

The team hope their find will help solve a problem dubbed the ‘Muddle in the Middle’.

It refers to the huge challenge in charting the development of humans between one million and 300,000 years ago, with fossils from those times exhibiting very diverse features.

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