Ancient Mystery Deepens: Fossil Found Outside Africa Challenges Human Origins Timeline
If a broken skull fragment tucked away in a dusty Athens museum has us rethinking the entire saga of human migration, well — you’d better sit down for this one. This battered piece of cranial real estate, nicknamed Apidima 1, just crashed the party as the oldest Homo sapiens fossil ever found outside Africa, clocking in at an eye-popping 210,000 years. That’s not just an eyebrow-raise; it’s a gnarly historical mic drop that pushes back the timeline of our ancestors’ great escape from Africa by a staggering 160,000 years. Makes you wonder: did our ancient relatives take the scenic route through southern Greece long before we thought, or was this an early travel glitch that went under the radar? Either way, it shakes the foundations of human history — and has some experts clutching their fossils in disbelief. Buckle up, because this fossil’s saga is part detective story, part scientific showdown, and all fascinating. LEARN MORE
The newly dated fossil suggests humans migrated out of Africa far earlier than we thought.
When a broken skull was excavated from a limestone cliff in the Apidima cave in Greece in the 1970s, experts didn’t fully understand what they’d found, and stored it in a museum in Athens. Now, according to The Guardian, a new analysis has now found the skull fragment to be the oldest human fossil ever found outside of Africa.
Published in the journal Nature, the research estimates that the partial skull is at least 210,000 years old. If accurate, that claim would force a significant rewriting of human history. Apidima 1, as the skull is called, would predate the oldest known Homo sapiens fossil in Europe by more than 160,000 years.
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