The Ancients - Human Origins: Did We Begin in Africa?

Episode Date: September 6, 2026

The story of human origins is often imagined as a simple journey from Africa, but is the truth actually much messier? Tristan Hughes and leading palaeoanthropologist Prof. Chris Stringer dismantle the traditional narrative, discussing how recent breakthroughs in fossils and ancient DNA reveal a complex, shifting history of multiple migrations and cross-breeding to uncover where we truly come from.MOREThe First Britons with Prof. Chris StringerListen on AppleListen on SpotifyRise of HumansListen on AppleLIsten on SpotifyPresented by Tristan Hughes. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. The studio manager is Hanif Hussain. The producers are Joseph Knight and McKenna Fernandez. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™The Ancients is now on YouTube! Watch HEREWant even MORE Ancients? Sign up to History Hit for early access ad-free, plus exclusive subscriber-only episodes. PLUS with a History Hit subscription you can watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. The story of modern human origins is often imagined as a simple journey out of Africa. Homo sapiens emerging somewhere on that continent before spreading across the world and replacing other forms of human life. But how is that story still evolving? Is the full truth of our beginnings actually much more complex? Over recent decades, evidence in the form of fossils, improved dating and ancient DNA have transformed the traditional picture, revealing a deeper, much messier tale of shifting African populations, multiple migrations, and sister species like Neanderthals. I'm Tristan Hughes. This is The Ancients. And today I'm

joined once again by leading paleoanthropologist Professor Chris Stringer to explore what the out-of-Africa theory really means today, why it still matters, and what exciting new discoveries could still be revealed about where we come from. Chris, it is such a pleasure to see you again. Welcome to our new studio. Yeah, it's great to be here. It looks great. Yeah.

And, well, we couldn't think of anyone better to come on the show to talk about human evolution and our story and the fact that Africa was, and still is, I guess, the mothership for our species. Yes, it still is the main place. But obviously, the more we learn about some of these other places, particularly places like China, we realise that they're an important part of the story too. And I guess it's, as we'll delve into, there's going to be quite a science he chatted

and how the out-of-Africa theory it has developed a lot over the decades, hasn't it? Yes. I mean, since even the 1970s and early 1980s, when I and a few others were proposing this, very much a minority view then, it was a very simple version that we had based on really slender evidence and it's developed so much now, particularly obviously with the DNA evidence, but also new fossil discoveries and new methods of dating things. And so for how long then has this idea, this proposal that, you know, Homo sapiens originated from Africa, how long has that been around? Well, I and a few others started to tentatively propose it in the early 1980s. 1980s. And it was based then just on the fossil evidence, but, you know, there was so much

we didn't know that there was so much uncertainty, that it was put forward very cautiously. And then in 1987, of course, we had the story of mitochondrial Eve appearing, which argued purely from recent DNA evidence, mitochondria, mitochondrial DNA inherited only through women. It argued that everyone in the world today could trace back their ancestry to a woman who lived in Africa maybe 200,000 years ago. And this was based purely on data from present-day humans, but it matched obviously very well with what some of us were saying. It gave an even clearer and apparently more confident picture that we had a recent African origin. I just wanted to ask that because I was wondering if anyone had potentially put forward to that theory

before the 1970s and the 1980s, but it does sound like that was actually where it really... Yeah, that was the beginning. I mean, people like Bill Howells, the anthropologist, he had argued for quite some time before that, that Homo sapiens was so different to the other things, the Neanderthals and so on, that we probably had a different origin and a single origin somewhere. But when he was proposing that, even in the 60s and 70s, he couldn't say where that place was. And it turned out later, of course, that it was Africa.

And when talking about a recent African origin, what time period should we be thinking of, roughly? Yes, well, the main exit that leads to the diversity of people today outside of Africa happened. Geneticists estimate around 60,000 years ago. So Homo sapiens having evolved for a long time in Africa, a small group got out of Africa and then founded the populations of the rest of the world. So that's the kind of recent out of Africa bit of the story. And we now know that it's more complicated than that, that there were some earlier exits of Homo sapiens out of Africa that didn't end up giving rise to the populations today. And also we know that it wasn't a pure out of Africa.

You know, some of us argued that it's virtually 100% recent African origin. But now we know that other humans contributed to our ancestry. People like Neanderthals, Denisovans, which will come on hopefully to talk about. They contributed a bit to our ancestry as well. So now I use the term, which I think was first used by Svanti Parni, mostly out of Africa. I think that's the best way of describing it for Homo sapiens origins. And I guess also is it, this is also enough I find fascinating, the fact that actually our story, our Homo sapiens story, the majority of it is before 60,000 years ago.

So there is a lot of archaeology still to be found in Africa itself, do we think, to kind of trace that earlier story of Homo sapiens. That's right. Yes, the main part of the story earlier on. is certainly an African story. And probably a lot of our behaviour originated in Africa as well as our anatomy. And certainly most of our DNA comes from that African ancestral population. One other big question, first of all. We say things like anatomically modern humans and archaic humans. What do we mean by that? Yes, those terms, I've used them a lot in the past.

I'm not sure they're very good terms, but they're certainly widely used. And so, we better sort of go into what they mean for most people. So, yes, our own species, Homo sapiens, if we look at people around the world today, we come in many different sizes and shapes and colors, but if we strip away the superficial features of the skin and hair and so on, get down to the bones and the teeth, the things that preserve in fossils,

there are certain shared characteristics that we can call anatomically modern human characteristics. And so I've got an example of a, that's a replica here, Fantastic. Of a fossil from Romania that's over 40,000 years old. But here it is with a lower jaw actually from a separate individual. But they show the features of anatomically modern humans.

So in the brain case, it's high and rounded. Small brow ridge at the front or maybe no brow ridge at all. Quite a small face tucked under the brain case. It's quite narrow at the base and expanded higher up. So the whole brain shape is different. And when we look at the lower jaw, we can see there's a nice chin on the front. And if we had the whole skeleton, we would see that that too is distinct, that there is a narrow pelvis in Homo sapiens, a narrow shoulder girdle. We're much less heavily muscled.

So anatomically, you know, we've got more grassile skeleton, if you like. We're slenderer than those earlier species, which mainly seem to be. be built for strength and power in their skeletons. So those are the shared features that we can look for. There are many more of them. If we take CT scans, even inside the earbones, we can see that the earbones of homo sapiens are distinct from those of Neanderthals. So even these tiny little bones that we can't even physically get to except with CT scans,

they're even distinct in homo sapiens than from people like the Neanderthals. So that's the anatomically modern. And our cake is used as the flip side of that. So the things that don't show those features are called archaic humans. And that would cover the Neanderthals and Homohydebigencis and Homo Mantecessa, Homo erectus. They're all called archaic humans. I don't think it's a good term because, of course, it's a big lumping term covering a huge amount of diversity. And actually the Neanderthals are not, in some ways, they're not really archaic.

They're very evolved as we are. So if we look at Neanderthal evolution, we can see that they evolved bigger brains as we did. their teeth got smaller as ours did. So they underwent changes too, and they're actually derived in their own direction, and as we are derived in our direction. So I prefer to talk about derive Neanderthals and derived one of my sapiens.

Interesting. But, you know, the terms I'll calculate and imagine and modern are still around, and yes, as a shorthand, I talk about modern humans, by which I mean things that in the skeleton show these sorts of features. Yes, because I have. Are the terms he like derived humans and basal humans as well?

Yes. And so in terms of archaic, I've tended to try and use the term basal. So these are things which are, you know, if you like, if we had an evolutionary tree, they'd be closer to the base of that evolutionary tree. They show more primitive features. So we've got an example here of a skull from Jebel Ihodde in Morocco. Yes. And this one is about 300,000 years old.

and I call it a basal homo sapiens. So it doesn't show all the features of Antwerpominy modern humans. It shows some of them. So, for example, here the brain case is still quite long and low, and there's still a strong browage. But the face, and if we have the teeth and the lower jaw, you can see there there are some homo sapiens features, but they're not fully developed.

So this, for me, will be a basal homo sapiens. And this is the key point, isn't it? A human skull from, and we'll explore Jebeliardhud a bit more in time, a homo sapiens skull from 300,000 years ago, can look very much different one for 100,000 years ago and the same with Neanderthals, early Neanderthal compared with late and so on. That's right, yes, if we had an Atapweca fossil here from 400,000 years ago, from Europe, from Spain, that would show,

it's what I call a basal Neanderthal. It shows some Neanderthal features, but it lacks some of the features of the late Neanderthals. For example, the brain's smaller. The teeth are a bit larger. And also there's even DNA. from the Atapuerca fossils at 400,000, showing that they are early members of the Neanderthal line.

Sadly, for Jebel I hood, we don't have DNA. DNA, of course, in an African environment, doesn't survive so well. So whereas we've got quite good early Neanderthal DNA, we don't have really any DNA of early Homo sapiens in Africa, unfortunately. And all this evidence that is coming to light now, I'm guessing the more, I mean, the previous view, the theory that we descended from Neanderthals

or Neanderthals came before Homo sapiens, that's now been very much pushed aside. Yes, so the idea that we evolved directly from Neanderthos, that was something I was testing in my PhD back in 19, I finished it in 1974. And one of the views I was testing was this view, which was a very common view then. Maybe the dominant view was that, yes,

we evolved directly from the Neanderthals and people like them around the world. And so if we had a complete fossil record in Africa, in Europe, we would see Neanderthals gradually changing into Europeans of today. So the brow ridges will get smaller, the teeth would get smaller, the skeleton would get more lightly built. They'd gradually develop a chin on the lower jaw. So we'd have this sequence from Neanderthal to Homo sapiens. I was testing that in my PhD and I could see no evidence for it. The Neanderthals seemed to be going in their own evolutionary direction as we were.

So in that PhD, I could conclude that we didn't evolve from European Neanderthals, but at that stage I couldn't say where we did evolve from. That came later. That came later and that's where we get out of Africa. And we're going to that now. We will delve into the nerdy details of the particular theories around out of Africa. But can you give us a bit of an overview right now as to what kind of the key developments in this theory, this hypothesis, what these key developments have been over the past few decades?

Yeah, so if we go back to the 1980s, when the ideas really started to take off of recent African origin, there already were a few fossils from Africa that seemed to look quite modern at an early date. So there's one in particular from Omokibish in Ethiopia, and I worked on that with Michael Day, and we did a reconstruction of the skull. and it showed for us modern human features. It had a small brow ridge. It was high and rounded. There was a chin on the lower jaw.

There was also a skeleton, part of a skeleton to go with it. That also seemed to show recent Homo sapiens features. Now back in the 1980s, it was argued by some people that it was at least 100,000 years old. And Myta and I accepted that dating. And therefore, this was evidence of a Homo sapiens existing, you know, at the same as the Neantiles were alive and it was in Africa. So this pointed to an African origin, but at that time we didn't have an ancestor for it. We didn't know where that, it was kind of isolated in a sense in Ethiopia. It certainly pointed to a recent African origin, but there

were people saying, well, it's wrongly dated or you're over interpreting the anatomy. There are fossils in China and elsewhere that look like Homo sapiens too and are just as old. So there was just no clear framework to really say that was the story. There was conflicting data and it took a while for more fossils from Africa to emerge, better dating to emerge, and for some of those other what seemed to be anomalies in other parts of the world got clearer with their dating. So some of those supposed ancient Homo sapiens in China were not actually Homo sapiens fossils or they were wrongly dated and were much more recent. So we got clarification of some of the more confusing bits of the story. But it really started to come together, yes, at the end of the 1980s with the arrival

of the first bits of DNA from recent humans that started to point to it. And then as the evidence accumulated in the 1990s at the early 2000s, we got this picture building up that we were pretty certainly, at least in my view, we looked like we were virtually 100% recent African origin. So I was interpreted in the fossil data, the behavioral data, the genetic data, as all pointing to a recent African origin with Homo sapiens, and one where if there had been any interbreeding with those other forms of humans, it was minimal. So I was aware that closely related species can interbreed, and I regarded the Neanderthals as a different species.

That was a view that kind of I started to pick up on with a few other people in the 1980s, that we went back to using the name Homo Neanderthalensis for the Neanderthals, which they'd been given way back in 1864. Then for a long time, you know, certainly when I was doing my PhD, it was common to call the Neanderthals Homo sapiens. They were regarded as a form of Homo sapiens. So I started with a few other people to argue in the 1980s that actually we should go back to having a separate species name for Neanderthals

and a separate species name for what became Homo. Hyde Bagances reviving that name. But I was aware that in modern mammals, for example, you can get into breeding between closely related species. So, for example, jackals and wolves, brown bears and polar bears, a number of species of monkeys in Africa can hybridise, even though we regard them as different species. So I thought it could have happened between us and Neanderthals. We could have interbred, but I thought that it wouldn't have been a normal event.

it would be a rare event, and then it happened 40,000 years ago. We're never going to find evidence of it today. Of course, I was wrong about that, because in 2010, we got the first reconstruction of a good quality Neanderthal genome. That was published in the journal Science, and it showed that indeed, people outside of Africa have around 2% Neanderthal DNA in their genomes. And that's because there was an interbreeding event, maybe 50,000 years ago, So Homo sapiens came out of Africa in this exit, maybe 60,000 years ago.

Soon after that, they met some Neanderthals. They did some interbreeding with them. And then as they spread around the rest of the world, they took that bit of Neanderthal with them. So not only is there around 2% Neanderthal in people in Europe, but it's there in China, it's there in Australia, it's there in Native Americans. So everyone outside of Africa has this Neanderthal component. So we have this kind of paradoxical situation that we did not evolve from neanderthals, which is what I was testing by PhD,

but they're partly our ancestors because we've got neanderthal DNA. So it's kind of, you know, they're a distinct lineage evolving for a very long period of time, hundreds of thousands of years, but not evolving to such an extent, there couldn't still be a bit of interbreeding. And not evolving in Africa alongside ourselves until we go out. So it's also further evidence for the African origin. So it sounds like it's this combination of improved dating over time, the discovery of some really remarkable new fossils,

and of course the introduction of DNA and the building up of this incredible DNA database. All of that combined, as we'll explore, helps make it, you know, why in academic circles especially this recent African origin is so persuasive today. Yes, I mean, for me it's persuasive. Of course, there are still people who argue that it's still an overinterpretation of the data, that actually the picture is much more complicated, that we should acknowledge these contributions from populations in the rest of the world as being more significant. So we have models like the braided stream model,

which says that the evolution of our species is more like a river, which has many different tributaries that separate off, but then they come together and merge. And this pattern's been going on for the whole of the evolution of Homo sapiens, probably been going on for one and a half million years. And that really there's no point in having these separate species names. Because there was a bit of interbreeding going on between many of these different branches that we should call everything Homo sapiens.

So it kind of goes back to that view that was around in the 70s and 80s, that actually let's call everything Homo sapiens that's essentially genus Homo. So even to Homo erectus back that far to one and a half. half, even close to 2 million years, people argue that we really shouldn't call that a separate species. Even that should be called homo sapiens. Now, for me, you know, I come out of a palatological background. I'm in a department with people who work on fossil fishes and fossil reptiles and so on.

And the methods they use to establish species in the fossil record are similar to the ones I use to establish fossils in the fossil human record. and the level of difference between us and Neanderthals, certainly in my view, and the view of many of them, is at the level which in any other animal would be called distinct species. So I still regard them as distinct species, even though we know there was a bit of interplea. But, you know, I'm not sort of wedded absolutely to the idea,

but it seems to me that if you call all of those things Homo sapiens, you really lose any meaning to the term. Because, you know, how do we describe what is, are Homo sapiens. Well, is it got a big brain? Well, not really, because the erectus ones are a very small brain. Small teeth, well, not really, because the early ones have got big teeth and Denisovans have got big teeth. Lack of brow ridges, well, no, there's brow ridges in most of them. So even to say, what is the brain size? What is the brain size of homo sapiens? Well, it's everything from down virtually the size of a gorilla up to the huge size of a Neanderthal

us. So the term homo sapiens become meaningless morphologically, I think, if you have this very wide definition. Gosh, we're getting deep into those theories already, aren't we, Chris? And we won't go into the weeds of what is a species today, because I know that is also, that's another episode in its own right. If you may allow me to ask a superlative question, because we have all this different evidence today. But have there been any landmark discoveries that we can say is the strongest evidence that we have today for evidence of an African origin for our species. Well, I think it has to be the genetic data, which is not a single thing, of course, it's a massive data that keeps building up, you know, tens and tens of thousands of genomes,

and all of them show that, first of all, if we partition variation in Homo sapiens today, by far the greatest part of it is in Africa. and there are deep lineages there and if we look at the variation of people outside of Africa it's a tiny subset of that whole variation that we find so just the pure fact of this huge diversity in Africa and all of the rest of us being a tiny sub-sample out of that diversity really does point to a recent African origin

and that's true for the white chromosome male inherited for the mitochondria female inherited and for the whole genome. So overall, I think genetic data are the strongest, but we now have a number of other fossils, not just Homo Kibish, but there's other fossils in Ethiopia, such as from Herto.

We've got evidence from southern Africa, from sites like Classes Rivermouth. And we've got the stuff, as we mentioned, from Jebel Ijid in Morocco, and later Moroccan fossils that all point to the existence of Homo sapiens features at a much earlier day in Africa than we find them anywhere else.

So, Chris, let's explore some of these fossil discoveries. And let's touch on the one for which you have a replica and you brought it up just a bit earlier, which is Jebel Erich. So can you set the scene of where this is what we should be thinking with Jebel Erhood? Yeah, so, you know, this is a replica of the first fossil that was found. So, you know, this was found before I'd done my PhD, it was called an African Neanderthal, when it was discovered around 1960. So it's from a quarry, a working quarry in northeast Africa in Morocco.

And northwest Africa. In North West Africa. So there's a quarry there. And in that quarry were sort of cave deposits within the quarry. And a number of fossils were found there. And this is one of the most complete ones that's been found. Was it an accidental discovery whilst they were working there? It was an accidental discovery.

So this was a commercial quarry. And these bones were being found. We don't know if any were found before that that were lost, but there were. So Moroccan scientists did conduct some excavations there when bones were showing up, and this turned up. And as I say, it was regarded by many people as being an African Neanderthal, and originally dated only about 40,000 years old. So when I did my PhD, I was lucky enough to be able to measure this when it was in Paris,

before it went back to Morocco. And I could see straight away that it wasn't a Neanderthal, because by then I'd seen a number of Neanderthal fossils in my trip around Europe in 1971 and the face on its own was unlike any Neanderthal face. It was like a slightly bigger version of our own face. So for me this certainly didn't look like a Neanderthal. But at 40,000 years old, you know, it was also too primitive to be an ancestor for Homo sapiens. So at that time it didn't seem to be particularly relevant for our origins.

It maybe was a relic persisting from an early. a stage over in a remote area peripheral area like Morocco. But a team went back to the site from about 2015 onwards and did new excavations and they recovered more material, more fossils, more stone tools, more animal bones, and they did much improved dating work. And that showed that these Jebelie Hood fossils, and by then there were a number of different skulls and teeth and jawbones, these were actually. about 300,000 years old.

And the stone tools were very nice examples of early middle stone age tools. So at 300,000 years, suddenly this was back in the scene as an important fossil because it did show, although primitive, it did show some Sapiens features. And so what do you mean by early middle stone age tool? Yes. So, yes, we've got these stages of the stone age, which archaeologists have set up. And in Africa, we've got the early stone age, the middle stone age and the later stone age. So the Middle Stone Age in Africa is equivalent to also the Middle Paleolithic.

That's another term, lower Paleolithic, Middle Paleolithic, Upper Paleolithic, Paleithic being old Stone Age. So we've got these stages of the Stone Age and in Africa the Middle Stone Age is the stage that's associated with the beginnings of Homo sapiens, things like Jebelihud. And the equivalent stage in Europe and Asia is associated. with the Neanderthals. Okay. And then it's called the middle palette.

Okay. So yeah, sorry about those technical terms. But yes, the fact that Ihold was associated with middle stone age tools also showed complex behavior. These are very nicely made tools. So it suggested that, you know, again, this was not a backward population in a peripheral area of Africa. It showed that Morocco was important in the story of our origins.

And more work is being done there down to the present day. I mean, all of a sudden, you know, in really, recent years, you know, redating that is now one of, if not the oldest evidence of homocipian we have from Africa and more to come, hopefully. Yes. I mean, it's, I don't think this can be the oldest evidence of homo sapiens because work I've been doing with Chinese scientists on fossils from China suggests that the roots of the Chinese population that we know as didisivans, also known as Homo Longi, Dragon Man, that Lin,

seems to go back at least a million years as a separate lineage. And if that's correct, that also implies that our lineage and the Neanderthal lineage had split off. And that means our lineage and the Neanderelian must also go back at least a million years to a common ancestor. So if that's true, then Ihood, in fact, is actually a relatively young Homo sapiens compared with ones that would be at the beginning of that evolution. So this is still very controversial. The genetic data suggests that we had a common ancestor with Neanderthals and Denisovans, maybe 700,000 years ago. We would suggest on some of the fossil data, it could be at least a million.

So this is ongoing work, but it certainly pushes back the ancestry further, even on genetic data, and that means that Jebelie Hood is by no means the oldest Thomas Appians. There must be some older ones. Either we've already got them and we can't recognize them, or they haven't yet been. found. Well, that's the thing. That's the exciting thing. Could there be almost a million years of story still to learn about from Africa in the story? Well, absolutely. I mean, there must be a deep history then for Sapiens to be uncovered in Africa and equally exciting, really. There must be a deep history for Neanderthals to be recovered outside of Africa, probably, and a deep history for

the Denisovans and the Homo Longi lineage that's beginning to be uncovered in China. And then potentially, I guess the next question would be more evidence of earlier ventures out of Africa by earlier, as you use the term earlier, more basal homo sapiens that we don't know much about as of yet. Yes, that's right. So, of course, the implication will be that is it really only one very late exit for homo sapiens or could there be earlier ones? And yes, we do seem to have evidence of earlier exits. So I was involved in studying a fossil from, a cave site in Greece called Epidima Cave. And a few years back, we published evidence that from that site, there's the back of a skull, which had been considered to be Neanderthal. But on our analyses, it actually looked like the back of a Homo sapiens skull.

And the dating evidence suggests that it's at least 210,000 years old. And what's intriguing is that after that fossil is in the site, we also have a proper Neanderthal fossil at the site. maybe 30 or 40,000 years younger, the Neanderthals were there and whatever evidence there was of early Homo sapiens had disappeared. So the Neander tiles came back and that early Homo sapiens population, if it was there, it's disappeared. Now, not everyone accepts that this is an early Homo sapiens, and we have to be cautious, it is only the back of a skull,

what was the rest of it like? But on that evidence, it certainly looks like there could have been an early Homo sapiens dispersal. And that actually ties up with some genetic data because there's quite an intriguing pattern when we look at Neanderthal and Homo sapiens DNA. I mention that we have a separation time maybe of 700,000 years for us and the Neanderthals, based on the whole genome. But when you look at the mitochondrial DNA of us and Neanderthals, that's inherited through females. When we look at the Y chromosomes of us and Neanderthals, inherited through males, they have a younger ancestry, a younger common ancestry, maybe only half

the age of what the whole genome would say, maybe 350,000. Now that's very strange. And so geneticists have proposed that there must have been an early exit of Homo sapiens out of Africa, maybe 300, 400,000 years ago. There was some interbreeding with the Neanderthals. And yes, that put a little bit of Homo sapiens DNA into their genome, but also it replaced their own mitochondria and Y chromosome with a more Homo sapiens like from a more bishops. From a more basal homo sapiens. Yes, these will be basal homo sapiens getting out of Africa, meeting the altars, doing a bit of interbreeding, and changing, basically, they're replacing their mitochondria and Y chromosome with a more homo sapiens like pattern, which is why they have a younger

divergence on mitochondria and Y from us than they do on the whole genome. So it's a complicated story, but the epitomofosal might match that by showing us that there were indeed homo sapiens in somewhere like Greece, more. than 200,000 years ago. And there's also evidence of earlier exits which we can pick up in China and even Australia because there are fossils in China that look sapiens-like and in Southeast Asia that look sapiens-like that are well over 60,000 years old. So I mentioned the geneticists estimate the main exit was 60,000 years onwards that gave rise

to populations outside of Africa today. But the fact that you've got fossils in China, in Sumatra, for example, in Laos, that are probably 70, 80,000 years old, means they predate that 60,000 exits. So there must have been earlier exits. And there's controversial evidence from Australia too. So a site called Maggiabbe 2 in northern Australia. It's got a very deep sequence and, you know, beautifully stratified layers. and at about 65,000 years ago on the dating from the sand deposits, there's a layer that has complex technology,

a lot of use of pigments, and dated at 65,000, again before the 60,000 exits supposedly. And we assume that's Homo sapiens because of the complexity of the behaviour. Of course, some people say, well, how do we know? We don't have fossils, but that would suggest there was even an early sapiens arrival in Australia, at least 65,000 years ago. So these earlier exits seem to have happened, but they didn't take hold in the same way.

Either those populations died out, as seems to have happened in Europe after Epidima, or maybe they were swamped by the main dispersal that came out at 60,000. That ended up being in larger numbers, and it's actually overprinted any signal of those earlier populations that were there. I love it, though, that these days are still being pushed back.

Australia's a good example. as well of that. Now we've kind of explained all of that and looked at some discoveries and the importance of DNA. I hope you don't mind if we now kind of delve into the theories themselves in regards to Out of Africa because it's all well and good saying, oh, they

spread out from here and went there and there and there. But what we actually mean by that, there's a lot of debate and lots of different theories aren't there? Yes. I mean, you know, as I've already shown, my own views of Outer Africa have changed really since those very early simple models. Things are more

complicated. The evidence of interbreeding makes things more complicated. So yes, we could say that you've got the strict recent African origin model and that's the model which the mitochondrial DNA seem to suggest that really we can talk about almost a pure out of Africa. So Homo sapiens evolved in Africa pretty much entirely, came out of Africa and replaced completely, those other populations. And that is just the traditional, the plain or simple, recent African origin.

That's the model. If you like, the one extreme version of a recent African origin. And I was always, I was never really wedded to that idea, although the mitochondria suggested it. I was always aware that there could have been a bit of interbreeding, but again,

I thought that would be trivial in the big picture. So we were effectively 100% recent African origin, even though there might have been some interbreeding. Okay, then people like Gunter Breyer proposed a model called recent African origin and hybridization. RAOH. Yeah, that's right. He proposed that from the end of the 70s into the 80s,

and we worked together on publications and papers with that model as well. And so he argued that, yes, it was mostly a recent African origin, but there was some interbreeding on maybe a bigger scale than I was arguing, but we could therefore expect to find some fossils that might show evidence of Neanderthal features, but again in the big picture this would not be very important. And I think Gunter's model is probably closest to what we've ended up with with the interbreeding evidence. It's recent African origin and hybridisation. And hybridisation, because we're talking about interbreeding between what I regard as different species.

So, you know, there will be these species coming together, even though the evolutionary receptor. And I mentioned really that this is something that we know happens quite commonly in mammals of birds. Someone's estimated that 16% of bird species today have hybridization with neighbouring species. So it's not as though this is a rare event. Genetic data shows it's actually a very common event. And so that seems to have happened in our ancestry. Then there was a model called the assimilation model. And this was proposed by people like Fred Smith and Eric Trinkhouse,

again in the late 70s and early 80s, and they were proposing that, yes, there was an African origin for Homo sapiens, but it was a much more gradual and diffuse process. So basically Africa dominated the picture because of a larger population. So Africa, in a sense, was pumping out these genes of more derived Homo sapiens features, and these were then being assimilated by the populations outside of Africa. So Neanderthals were picking up those bits of DNA and becoming more sapiens-like. And over in the Far East, populations were picking up those sapiens-like genes that were coming out of Africa

and were being picked up by populations there. So those populations outside of Africa would gradually transform with this mixing of DNA into homo sapiens. So it's a kind of blend of an African orogy and regional continuity. So you've got kind of both side by side. So it means Africa's important, but not as important as the recent African origin hybridization model or the real single origin model would propose. That's three. That's a third model.

And then we've got the classic multiregional model, which argues that basically you've got ancestral populations for Homo sapiens all over the place where everywhere that Genus Homo lived and evolved, they evolved towards Homo sapiens. So the Neanderthals were evolving to Homo sapiens in Europe. We have populations in China evolving to Homo sapiens there. Populations in Java and Indonesia are evolving from what we would traditionally call Homo erectus into recent populations in Australasia. And in Africa, of course, there's also a transition from early Homo populations towards Homo sapiens.

So Homo sapiens evolves all over the world where ancient people lived, But there's not speciation. They're not going their separate ways because gene flow is keeping them together. So gene flow acts like a kind of glue holding them together. Populations in Africa are interbreed amid ones in Western Asia, who are then interbreeding in populations in Europe and over in the Far East. And so there's never enough genetic separation for speciation. And it's essentially the evolution of one species, homo sapiens, over one and a half million years.

Yeah. Those are the four traditional models. Yes, those are the four traditional models. And there's also the Braided Stream model. Yes, I've got this as well. So these are newer models that are emerging. Yes, it's a newer name. I think essentially it's the multi-regional model, really, under another name.

So for me, it's very difficult to separate it from, well, probably the assimilation model and the classic multi-regional model. Brady Stream is really like both of those. So it's suggesting that you've got continuity over most of the inhabitants. world. It doesn't get in so much to those tricky issues of species, but it argues that essentially there is no single place where homo sapiens evolved. And what I've said is, well, if it is a braided stream, then it's a braided stream out of Africa. So the braided stream, the main, by far the main flow, is coming from Africa. And yes, there are these subsidiary channels which pick up some DNA

from these other populations, but Africa is still the dominant part of the story. And lastly, the African population structure model. Yes, so I've been involved with people like Eleanor Sherry in developing that model. And she's really developed this into what you can call a pan-African model. So the idea is that homo sapiens did not evolve in one place. So back in the 70s and 80s with fosters like Omu Kibish, we were arguing some of us that East Africa was going to be very important in Homo sapiens origins, maybe the most important, maybe the single centre where it happened.

The birthplace. The birthplace of Homo sapiens would be in East Africa. Other people argue that it could be South Africa. So there are these different ideas about where Homo sapiens originated. And the problem is that, of course, these models were built on where you had the best fossil evidence, which of course may not be where it was all happening. And people have compared this with, you know, the drunk guy who. looking for his car keys and, you know, it's night time and he's lost his car keys,

and he goes and looks under the street light because that's where the light is. But in fact, his car keys are somewhere else in the dark. So it could be that that's our situation, that of course we look at the areas where there's the best evidence of Homo sapiens origins, and that could include Morocco now. But what Ellie argued and some of the rest of us joined in on that was that actually there were probably a number of parts of Africa that contributed to our... origins. So homo sapiens, early homo sapiens populations were widespread in Africa. They were in Morocco, certainly, they were in Ethiopia. They were in Central Africa. They were down in South Africa.

And these populations, when they were separated by climate change, so for example, the spread of deserts at times may have pinned them back and separated them, and they went their own way in evolution. But at other times when climate's improved and there was more rainfall, these populations spread into newly greened areas, met each other, exchanged genes, exchanged ideas. So we get a much more complex network, a braided stream if you like, but just in Africa, where Homo sapiens is evolving as a composite of these different populations that finally come together maybe 100,000 years ago to become the Homo sapiens that then spreads across the whole world. So the combining of these populations, I said that seems to happen very late in the story of Homo sapiens

then in their development from what you were saying earlier? That's right, yes. So this is a complex picture that goes on for hundreds of thousands of years, and we only get a kind of coalescence to a homo sapiens pattern, both in anatomy and behaviour that comes together maybe 100,000 years ago also, and then emerges from Africa and stays behind in Africa as well. And there are some even more complex models which are kind of, you know, there as an undercurrent that a number of genealiener,

And the geneticists are saying, well, even these models are too simple. And actually, there is evidence that there's a very deep split in the evolution of Homo sapiens that might go back one and a half million years in Africa. And this is an astonishing model. It argues that there could have been, basically, there was one ancestral population, maybe one and a half million years ago in Africa. It then split into two distinct lineages, which then evolved alongside each other. One of them then gave rise to Neanderthals and Denisovans and later on to the Homo sapiens that we find later on in Africa and then going out of Africa.

But that second lineage is evolving alongside them for a million years. And maybe 300,000 years ago, it interbreeds with the Homo sapiens that are in Africa and then produces the final push to make Homo sapiens as we know it today. Anatomically modern. Anatomically, modern homo sapiens. And that population then disappears conveniently. So it's an incredible story, but there are several geneticists now arguing for these kinds of complex models. So if that's correct, it's even difficult to decide where homo sapiens starts. Is it one and a half million years ago?

Is it when you get that interbreeding event maybe 300,000 years ago? So these are newly emerging models, and it's going to take a while for them to be integrated. and also for the fossil evidence to be put together with them. But, you know, if they're correct, then it might bring something like our old friend Homer Heidelbergensis back into the picture. I mean, first of all, Chris, before we go into that, it sounds as if then, like that theory then, us today, was it not basal, what's the word, derived or anatomically modern Hemosapian,

we're, you know, from that converging, we're almost like a blend of different basal. all homo sapien groups coming together, which I'm getting my head around now. Yeah, I mean, we're all having to get a head around it. And, of course, these are models. They're based some of them on modern genetic data purely. Some of them do incorporate ancient DNA.

But they're revolutionary models, of course, in the depth that they argue for our origins. And something like Homohydabegensis, so this is a replica of the skull from Cabwave, Broken Hill, in Zambia. Zambia, okay. And we can now date it at about three. 300,000 years old. And it's, you know, certainly a non-an-an-a-homically modern human. We've got a massive

brow ridge, a long, low skull, angled at the back, rather homo erectus. Quite a large brain, though. That's a modern-sized brain in there, but a big face. So this is part of what I've called homohydebagesis. It's a species that was widespread. It was in Europe. It was in Africa, probably almost certainly in Asia as well. And I used to argue that it was probably the common ancestor for us and Neanderthals. At that time, many people dated this skull at 500,000 years. And that seemed a reasonable date from which we could go to Homo sapiens and Neanderthals from something like this. That's what I used to think. But of course, as we found other fossils, as we've got younger dating for this fossil at 300,000, I mean, that means it's about

the same age as Jebelihud. And it's much less sapiens like than Jebeliehood. So I, then said, well, actually, I got that wrong. Haudebogensis is not our common ancestor. It's a side branch that died out. But these basal, deep split models that I'm talking about from the genetic data, they argue that there could have been a lineage alongside homo sapiens in Africa for maybe a million years, that then interbred with homo sapiens about 300,000 years ago and then disappeared. Well, Haiderbergensis might come into the picture, back into the picture, as being that other

lineage that coexisted with this evolving sapiens lineage, in which case even this could be part of our ancestry too. I was about to ask, could this actually be a basal homo sapiens? Well, it doesn't, I mean, it doesn't look like a homo sapiens. So I would have trouble calling it a homo sapiens. For me, it's a distinct species. But it would suggest that there was an interbreeding event which put in maybe 20% DNA into the evolving homo sapiens lineage.

So a much higher level than has been talked about for the Neanderthals and Denisovans. So it would be a significant part of our ancestry. But again, in my view, we wouldn't have evolved from Hydeburgenses, but it would be part of our ancestry, an important part of our ancestry, if those models are correct. But I stress that they're newly emerging models, and we're all looking at how they can work, and that they need better testing, of course.

Chris, I have to get you on every couple of years, because it always seems that more complex things are coming out to more complex models. Yeah, I mean, of course, it's an experience. exciting time with all these different ideas coming through. But it's very difficult to give an overview, a simple overview, certainly, that the experts are confused now as much as everyone else is. And also the fact that, like, I was getting my head around it. First of all, that they're not being this idea of one birthplace, but then at the same time is saying that there are several

different birthplaces of Homo sapiens also a bit misleading at the same time. Yes, I mean, Africa is still the dominant place in our story. But of course, which parts of Africa? I mean, if this story is correct of these two deep separate lineages for a million years, we've got to ask ourselves, how could these lineages remain separate for a million years in somewhere like Africa? What was keeping them apart? Did they live in completely different areas? Or were they in some way different behaviorly that they didn't actually interbreed much

until this last interbreeding phase at around 300,000? We've covered a lot about the Homo sapiens story and how complicated it is now before the main exodus migration out of Africa itself. But if we focus on that 60,000 years ago, how easy would it have been for Homo sapiens to leave Africa? Yeah, I mean, that's a good question because we don't know the precise date of exit. We think it was a small group of people or maybe a successive small groups of people, but close in time. time. And we don't know what the climatic conditions were at that time because we don't have it precisely dated. So at times we know that that region, northeast Africa and the Levant, at times it was relatively arid, at times it was well watered with more rainfall. So we guessed that it was

probably a time when the climate improved and that allowed Homo sapiens to move into the region and of course they would have been following their food. So if there was an expansion of grasslands and even sort of woodlands and an expansion of the animals that are feeding on that new expansion, then the humans are going to follow because that's where their food is. So it may be that these people were just following their food in coming out of Africa. And, you know, of course for them, well, Africa, you know,

they didn't know they were leaving Africa. They were going into a new area. And that then was the beginning of that out of Africa expansion. There are some people who think that it might have been more a forced exit, that perhaps there was a deterioration of climate in North East Africa. And these populations were pushed out. And that would explain the larger numbers by the game. In trying to find a new area.

So, yes, so we're not sure if it was push or pull, were they pushed out into Western Asia, or were they pulled out into Western Asia by improved conditions. And in regards to the routes that they would have, have taken back then. Should we just be thinking of Arabia and the Levant, you know, Syria, Palestine, Israel, today, that area, or could they potentially, those in Morocco at the Straits of Gibraltar have made that short crossing to southern Spain, well, Gibraltar and Southern Spain today as well? Yeah, so in terms of the Western route via, you know, the Straits of

Gibraltar, some people do believe that there were crossings, early crossings. So there are stone tools on an island off the coast of Morocco that looked Neanderthal-like but of course we don't have the fossars to show Neanderthals were there so most of the evidence and this includes evidence of the large mammals as well suggests that

there were not any early crossings across there of populations in either direction from North Africa to Europe or Europe to North Africa and that those crossings came much later you know the waters there are actually quite dangerous. You've got very strong currents through there. And so, and of course, even if a small population got across, you know, it may not have survived. So the majority opinion is that we didn't

have early crossings on the western side and that, yes, it's over in northeast Africa. Some people think that there could have been crossings at the southern end of the Red Sea, where it's very narrow and it would have been a crossing direct into Arabia. And a more verdant Arabia. Yes. And Arabia at times has been much greener. So perhaps there were crossings down there. But again, majority opinion is that it would have been further north through the Sinai and into the main parts of Western Asia. Okay, well, let's go to China and let's go Peking Man,

which is, I guess we can use this skull a little bit for. Yes. How does Peking Man, and explain what Peking Man is as well, if you don't mind, I've got a skull in front of me at those. Yes. How this story potentially fits. into the kind of the recent African origin or people used to think it did. Yeah, so this is an example, of course, of Homo erectus, one of the classic Homo erectus populations

from China. So these finds began to be made at Jugu Dien near Beijing in the late 1920s and in the 1930s. There were controlled excavations there that recovered a wonderful suite of fossils that were similar to the ones known from Java and what we now call Homo erectus. So these populations were in the Beijing area about 500,000 years ago. And for people who believed in regional continuity, the multi-regional model, these were going to be the ancestors of modern East Asian populations, for example, the modern Chinese.

And people argue that you can see features in these fossils that come through to modern populations in East Asia today. For example, having a particular shape of the incisor teeth, a relative lack of wisdom teeth, third molars, these were features that were thought to be there in Peking Man, as these fossils became known, and that can be found in modern Chinese populations at a higher frequency. So that was the continuity idea. Of course, the recent Africanology would suggest that there is no continuity with the

rectus. There is continuity with Denisovans, who are a lineage, that we, we. think evolved alongside erectus. So in China, we had the continuation of Homo erectus down to maybe three or four hundred thousand years ago. So there for over a million years, but also alongside them, we've got the evolution of Homo Longi, Dragon Man, and we've got this repiker over there. Green-colored reprigger is the halving cranium, which we think is, so it's the type

specimen of Homo Longi, Dragon Man, but also. so pretty certainly a denisivum. So that lineage was in China as well evolving and the erectus lineage died out. The denisivans continued for much longer, interbred with homo sapiens and then they died out too. So it's this idea that once thought that this meant that, kind of contrasted with the recent African origin theory, but more recently with the discovery of the denisivans and so on, actually this has been largely debunked now. Do you think then? Well, there are some people in China who are still wedded to the idea that peak-in-male fossils are important in the ancestry of modern Chinese people. So, you know, there are some political factors in there as well, which are influencing those views.

And because it's possible there is a little bit of DNA even because there is evidence that there was archaic integration from a very early population into the Denisovans. So possibly erectus, well, in fact, almost certainly there's. There's evidence that erectus interbred with denisivans and then denisivans interbred with homo sapiens. So there could be some transmission via the denisivans of erectus DNA into homo sapiens today in the Far East. So they could even be a little bit. Fair enough. Never say never. Recent Asian origin, recent African.

It's so interesting, I guess. Yes. But it's going to be a very small amount of DNA, but it could be there at a very small level. And Chris, like, what do you think is the best one sentence? answer to Homo sapiens origins today? I would say that we are mostly out of Africa. Mostly out of Africa. That summarizes it for me.

I think that's quite nice, isn't it, as well? You brilliantly detailed all those, the complicated, how it's getting more and more complicated, the thinking about our story before we leave Africa, multiple birthplaces, converging your populations to form anatomically modern Homo sapiens. and new discoveries coming out, it seems like there's still so much we don't know and why it's still so exciting, but bound to get even more complicated in the years ahead.

Absolutely. I mean, just think, you know, since I did my PhD, just how much has happened. It's incredible how much our knowledge has grown. And yes, in some ways it gets more complicated and other ways it gets simpler because along the way, we can dispense with the incorrect ideas. You know, as we have new dating,

we can dispense with the confusion that was created by bad, where we get fossils that have been wrongly interpreted, we can get rid of that confusion. So, yes, in some ways it's a more complicated story. I would say it's a richer story. It's a more honest story of our origins. And I think what it shows us is that actually homo sapiens origins,

in my view, is not something special. If we had this degree of information about the evolution of, let's say, lions or pandas or hyenas, they would be similarly rich if we ever have the evidence of gorilla and chimpanzee evolution, which we mostly lack. They would have their own rich stories to tell as well. So I think this is showing us the way forward

that when you get more data, yes, it's a complex story, it's a richer story. And it isn't just our story. All of these other species had their own wonderful origin stories to tell. And we shouldn't forget them. And of course, that's true for the Neanderthals, for the Denisovans,

for Hyder Borghion. all of them have their own rich evolutionary history that we're only beginning to tell. Chris, you are one of, if not the leading expert on human evolution and early Homo sapiens and the developing story in the Anstools. We'll have to get you back on as well in the future. It just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show. It's been a pleasure again. Thanks so much for joining us on The Ancients today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you are loving the Ancients, then why not become a history hit subscriber? As a a subscriber, you will have access to hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release

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