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Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ

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out of Africa

Persian Plateau, the most likely place where the ancestors of all present-day non-Africans lived for the 20,000 years that followed their migration Out of Africa. Source: Vallini et al/Nature

Scientists Make A Great Step Forward in the ‘Where After Africa?’ Question

A growing body of evidence indicates that our ancestors left Africa between approximately 70 to 60 thousand years ago. Yet, it wasn't until around 45,000 years ago that they spread across Eurasia...
Main; Wadi Gharandal riverine wetland along the Jordan Rift Valley. Inset of flaked stone handtool, found in the Jordan Valley. Source: Main; Mahmoud Abbas, Inset; University of Southampton

Humans Used Alternate Migration Route Out of Africa 80,000 Years Ago

By no means is climate change a new phenomenon – in fact, throughout its 4.6-billion-year long history, the Earth has undergone innumerable climatic patterns over thousands of years. A new study...
Investigators in Tam Pà Ling Cave in northern Laos. Source: Kira Westaway/ The Conversation

Modern Humans Went to Southeast Asia Before the Big Wave Out of Africa

Kira Westaway /The Conversation In 2009, when our team first found a human skull and jawbone in Tam Pà Ling Cave in northern Laos, some were skeptical of its origin and true age. When we published a...
Human migration out of Africa seems to have had a long pause in the Arabian Peninsula, acclimatizing, and perhaps enjoying water sources such as these at Wadi Darbat in the Dhofar region of Oman.	Source: hyserb/Adobe Stock

30,000 Year 'Arabian Standstill': New Phase in Human Migration Detected

Ray Tobler / Shane T Grey / Yassine Souilmi /The Conversation Most scientists agree modern humans developed in Africa, more than 200,000 years ago, and that a great human diaspora across much of the...
Evidence from stone tools indicate earliest humans migrated to Europe in three waves. Source: Gorodenkoff/Adobe Stock

New Study Claims Earliest Human Migrants Came to Europe in Three Waves

As recently as 2021, most scholars still believed that modern humans first arrived in Europe about 42,000 years ago. But a 2022 research project produced evidence of an earlier wave of migrants who...
Reconstruction of the Peking man skull. Source: kevinzim / CC BY 2.0

Peking Man and China’s Paleontological Nationalism

At the beginning of the 20th century, a team of international paleontologists prepared to excavate a cave located in a limestone formation known as Dragon-Bone Hill, a few hours outside of Beijing...
Weekly Top Stories: A Quick Catch Up On What You May Have Missed

Weekly Top Stories: A Quick Catch Up On What You May Have Missed

In last week’s top stories, we had a shock revelation that the Hopewell culture collapsed after a comet strike, prehistoric cave dwellers were unbelievably clever about where they placed their fires...
A top (a), rear (b), bottom (c) and front (d) view of the vertebra discovered at 'Ubeidiya	Source:  Dr. Alon Barash, Bar-Ilan University

1.5-Million-Year-Old Human Remains Point to Two Waves Out of Africa

Human bones uncovered in Israel have been dated to 1.5 million years with repercussions for the Out of Africa theory. What they tell researchers is that our ancient relatives left Africa in two waves...
The rock slab at Trachilos, Crete, where the 6-million-year-old hominin Crete footprints were first discovered in 2002.	Source: Olaf Tausch / CC BY 3.0

Cretan Footprints Challenge Darwin’s Out of Africa Theory, Says Study

The evolution of human bipedalism is supposed to be 4 million years old, beginning with primates, which caused the separation of the first hominids from the rest of the four-legged apes. Walking on...
The Jubbah Oasis in northern Saudi Arabia, where humans were repeatedly present during periods of increased rainfall over hundreds of thousands of years.           Source: Ceri Shipton, Palaeodeserts Project / Nature

Arabian Peninsula Was a Hotbed of Hominin Cultures 400,000 Years Ago

Three things that we’ve heard before ad nauseam – climate change, human migration, and Africa being the cradle of modern humans. Combining all of them together is a fascinating new study which shows...
Neanderthals cohabited with modern humans in the Negev desert. Source: Kovalenko I / Adobe Stock

Humans and Neanderthals Met and Mated 50,000 Years Ago in Negev Desert

A recent re-examination of artifacts collected from Israel’s central Negev desert has revealed important details about the development of human culture in the region, according to a new study...
Early humans took detours to pleasant environments on their prehistoric route to Europe. Source: Kovalenko I / Adobe Stock

Humans Took Pleasant Detours on the Prehistoric Route to Europe

New research shows that the environment is a key factor in mapping the prehistoric routes that humans took when they headed out of Africa towards Europe. More favorable climates enticed Homo sapiens...
Human and animal footprints found in Tabuk, northern Saudi Arabia. Source: Heritage Commission Press Release

Footprints Reveal Passage of Early Humans From Africa Through Arabia

In Saudi Arabia , an astonishing discovery has been made in the north-western desert. A team of archaeologists have found evidence of the oldest human habitation in the Arabian Peninsula . Several...
Tools featuring Nubian Levallois technique found in situ by Dimona, in the Negev Desert, Israel. Source: Emil Eladjem, Israel Antiquities Authority

Artifacts Reveal Out of Africa Route Through Negev Desert

A spectacular Meso-Paleolithic site has been found in the Negev Desert in Israel. Artifacts from this desert site are enhancing archaeologists’ understanding of how modern humans made their way into...
The lower jaw of the 7.175 million-year-old Graecopithecus freybergi (El Graeco) from Pyrgos Vassilissis, Greece (today in metropolitan Athens).

7.2 million-Year-Old Pre-Human Fossil A Challenge to Out of Africa?

A new analysis of two 7.2 million-year-old fossils belonging to a hominin species nicknamed “El Graeco” from Mediterranean Europe, suggests that mankind emerged in Europe and not in Africa. The new...
Study shows human migration could have followed monsoons to the Levant.	Source: mdesigner125 / Adobe Stock

Human Migration Route Out of Africa Tracked Monsoons

By Kelly April Tyrrell /University of Wisconsin-Madison Last year, scientists announced that a human jawbone and prehistoric tools found in 2002 in Misliya Cave, on the western edge of Israel, were...
Representation of a Neanderthal, one of the five archaic human groups. Source: regis allouet /Adobe Stock

Modern Humans Interbred With At Least Five Archaic Human Groups

Genetic analysis has revealed that the ancestors of modern humans interbred with at least five different archaic human groups as they moved out of Africa and across Eurasia. While two of the archaic...
A 210,000-year-old human skull found in Greece suggests our species left Africa much earlier than previously thought.            Source: esben468635 /Adobe Stock

210,000 Year Old Homo sapiens Skull From Greece is Oldest Outside Africa

Anthony Sinclair / The Conversation A 210,000-year-old human skull could provide new evidence that our species left Africa much earlier than previously thought. A new study published in Nature of two...
Modern human eyes (Konzentation)

Origin of Modern Human Behavior is South NOT East Africa [New Research]

Researchers from the University of Huddersfield, with colleagues from the University of Cambridge and the University of Minho in Braga, have been using a genetic approach to tackle one of the most...
Key images from the top human origins stories of 2018: Sophisticated tools and large, all-purpose handaxes from the Olorgesailie Basin in Kenya. (Human Origins Program, Smithsonian) Drawing of a Neandertal mother and a Denisovan father with their child, a girl, at Denisova Cave in Russia. (Petra Korlević) Neanderthal cave art in La Pasiega, Spain (C.D Standish, A.W.G. Pike and D.L. Hoffmann) Photograph of a footprint beside digitally-enhanced image of the same feature. (Duncan McLaren) The left hemi-maxilla

Five Things We Learned About Our Human Origins in 2018

The question of what makes us human is one that is fascinating to most of us, and for many the answer lies in looking back to our roots as a species. 2018 was a fantastic year for learning new and...
Neanderthal vs human skull.

Artificial Intelligence Has Identified Previously Undetected Hominid in the Human Family Tree

By combining deep learning algorithms and statistical methods, investigators from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), the Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG-CRG) of the Centre for...
Eritrean Grand Canyon, East African rift valley.

Rethinking Homo sapiens? The story of our origins gets dizzyingly complicated

By Darren Curnoe / The Conversation You might say it’s the ultimate prize of science, to discover when, where and why humans evolved. For a long time, the evidence has been overwhelming that Homo...
The 177,000 to 194,000-year-old maxilla (upper jaw) of Misliya-1 hominin

Jawbone of Earliest Modern Human Outside of Africa Discovered in Israel

A large international research team, led by Israel Hershkovitz from Tel Aviv University and including Rolf Quam from Binghamton University, State University of New York, has discovered the earliest...
A large hand axe found in the Wadi Dadsa.

Ancient Stone Artifacts Could Tell the Story of When Early Humans Spread Out of Africa

A team of archaeologists has announced the discovery of over a thousand stone artifacts, with some of them being up to 1.76 million years old. The discovery took place at Wadi Dabsa, in southwest...

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