00:00Humans emerged at least half a million years earlier than first thought,
00:04according to a million-year-old human skull found in China.
00:09Scientists claim their analysis changes our understanding of human evolution
00:14and could rewrite the history of the human race.
00:18Well, Juliet Mann has been speaking to one of the scientists behind this research.
00:23This skull actually has been out of the ground for a long time.
00:26It was found back in 1990 in central China, and it dates to about a million years ago,
00:32so it's a very interesting fossil just from that point of view.
00:35And it was found with, there are two other skulls from the site,
00:40and this one had been crushed in the ground, so it was out of shape.
00:45And my Chinese colleagues have applied some very nice techniques using CT scanning and computers
00:52to reconstruct the skull close to its original shape.
00:57And that meant for the first time it could be studied properly,
01:00comparing it with over a hundred other human fossils.
01:04Well, that's the thing, isn't it?
01:06There are very many different human skulls that are out there.
01:11What stands out from this particular study that helps you learn something new?
01:15Yes, so, at a million years old, the expectation was that this fossil belonged to the species Homo erectus, erect human,
01:25and that's a widespread species.
01:28We know it was in Africa, it was certainly over in China and Java, earlier on in Western Asia.
01:36So this species was around widely, and it was assumed that this specimen belonged to that species.
01:42But I had seen pictures of it and studies of it from before, and I doubted that it belonged to Homo erectus.
01:50And so, joining with my Chinese colleagues, we've been able to analyze it and show that it is different from Homo erectus.
01:57It represents something new, and our analyses suggest that it's an early member of the group.
02:02That included Dragoman, Homo longi, and also these people called the Denisovans,
02:08who we mainly know about from their DNA, from a site in Siberia.
02:14So, having it as a member of that lineage suggests that that lineage goes back at least a million years,
02:20which is the age of this fossil.
02:22Does that mean we're not closer, but we're further away from discovering, really,
02:26where human beings like you and me really come from?
02:28Well, not really.
02:31We think this helps to sort that out, because our lineage goes back as well to that time.
02:36So, when this lineage of this fossil from Yung Shani existed a million years ago,
02:43already, in our analyses, the ancestors of Homo sapiens, our species, of the Neanderthals,
02:50of another species called Homo heidobagensis,
02:53those other branches had already branched off from the lineage of Dragoman and Yung Shani.
03:00And so, that pushes back our own species' origin, our own lineage' origin,
03:04to beyond a million years, and that of the Neanderthals as well.
03:08Some genetic data suggested we only split from Neanderthals maybe half a million years ago.
03:14Our analyses will suggest it's double that age.
03:17Wow.
03:18Well, just quickly, because it sounds like there is a lot more to learn.
03:22What happens next?
03:25Well, yes, so, obviously, there should be early representatives of all of these lineages
03:29a million years ago, if we're correct.
03:31Then, maybe they're out there, or maybe we've still got to discover them.
03:35So, yes, we have a lot more to do in comparative data to look at other fossils,
03:39but also more information from this fossil and from the Dragoman fossil.
03:43So, there's lots of elements, for example, details of the shape of the brain, the ear bones.
03:50There's lots of other details we can add to these studies,
03:53maybe eventually even some genetic data in the form of fossil proteins, which will also help us.
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