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Oldest Human Remains Found in Morocco

Oldest Human Remains Found in Morocco

Scientists have found remains of homo sapiens predating any prior finds in Morocco.

After dating new fossils found in the mountains of Morocco, scientists now believe that the modern human rose about 100,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Up until now, it was believed that Homo sapiens (the modern human species) came to be some 200,000 years ago. However, scientists now have reason to believe that the great advancement happened more closely to 300,000 years ago.

A composite reconstruction of the fossils found in Jebel Irhoud in Morocco.

A composite reconstruction of the fossils found in Jebel Irhoud in Morocco. Credit: Philipp Gunz, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

At the Moroccan Jebel Irhood, about 95 kilometers west of Marrakesh, paleontologists have dug up what was discovered to be the oldest known remains of the modern human. Scientists have previously found bone fragments in South Africa which they believed dated back to 260,000 years ago. These new bones, which include a skull, could serve as proof, confirming that humans actually did walk the Earth back then, and maybe even before.

With the human remains dating back 200,000 years found in Ethiopia, west Africa, and now older remains in the south and east, there’s reason to believe that the modern human first lived on the African continent – across all of it.

The Jebel Irhood site where the bones were found was first discovered by miners in the 1960s. Other finds in the area tells us that the early humans were prolific hunters, used stone tools and weapons, and lived on a diet of gazelles, zebras, buffaloes and wildebeests.

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