Out of Africa Theory Changed

Live Science

An analysis of a 1.5 million-year-old vertebra from a human relative living in what is now Israel suggests that ancient humans dispersed out of Africa in multiple waves.

Transcript

00:00There is a continuous debate about the nature of out-of-Africa migration.

00:05Was this a one-time event or did it take place on multiple occasions?

00:17The site of Ubediah is found close to the southern edge of the Sea of Galilee,

00:22near Kibbutz Beit Zera, and is one of the earliest prehistoric sites to be found outside of Africa

00:27and dates to around 1.5 million years ago. The only other site that predates Ubediah is the Manisi

00:34in the Republic of Georgia, which dates to around 1.8 million years ago.

00:41Ubediah was discovered and excavated in the early 60s by many of the famous Israeli pre-historians

00:48who uncovered rich stone tools assemblages that were used by early humans, together with numerous

00:54animal bones, some of which went extinct long time ago, like saber-toothed cats and mammoths,

00:59while others are not usually associated with Israel, such as hippos, rhinos, and big crocodiles.

01:07In 2018, Miriam Bellmaker won a National Science Foundation grant to study the ancient climate

01:13and to accurately date the site. While studying animal bones from the site, she came across a

01:19vertebra with a human-like feature that was actually excavated in 1966. Together with Professor El-Abbin,

01:26we studied the vertebra and came up with some new and important conclusions. First, it is a fossilized

01:34early human bone that belonged to a child. We know so because of the shape of the vertebra and the fact

01:41that it is incomplete, meaning that it did not finish its growing process. We estimate that had it reach

01:48adulthood. This individual would be around 1.8 meters tall and weigh about 19 kilograms. These numbers are

01:56similar to some of the large-bodied hominins that are found in Africa in the similar time period,

02:05but are very different from the small-bodied hominins that we found in Georgia. Second,

02:11he will witness two distinct human species at the same time period, which is known as the lower

02:17Pleistocene for Pleistocene outside of Africa. We know that the earliest stages of human evolution

02:23took place in Africa based on the fossil record and by comparing DNA data from apes and humans.

02:31However, over the years, there is a continuous debate about the nature of out-of-Africa migration.

02:38Was this a one-time event or did it take place on multiple occasions? And who were the people who

02:44migrated out of Africa? Our current study indicates that early hominins migrated at least twice and in

02:52two distinct ways. This is because the people of Dmanisi are different in size and shape from those

02:59in Ubadia. Moreover, Dr. Omri Barzilai studied the stone artifacts from both sides,

03:05concluded that the stone manufacturing techniques, as well as the stone tools themselves,

03:11are different. Professor Miriam Bellmaker concludes that the climate, as well as the animals, are also

03:18different in both sides. Thus, with each migration waves came new and different types of hominins,

03:26with their own stone-making traditions, which may indicate maybe about their cognitive abilities

03:33and the different preferences of their ecological niche and habitat. Thank you for listening and have a great day!

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