The approximately 1.8 million-year-old Homoerectus Jawbone, discovered in the Republic of Georgia, may be evidence of one of the earliest human groups living outside of Africa.
The discoveries, released on July 31 by the Georgia National Cultural Heritage Preservation Agency, shed new light on the evolution of our genus Homo, and are expected to “reveal the reasons for the early human migration from Africa,” according to Giorgi Bidzinashvili, an archaeologist at Ilia State University in Tbilisi.
Bidzinashvili has been leading excavations since 2020 at an early Stone Age site in Orosmani, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Georgia’s capital Tbilisi. Researchers discovered stone tools near the bones of ancient animals.
H. erectus evolved in Africa about 2 million years ago. It was the first human ancestor to leave Africa, exploring parts of Europe, Asia and Oceania. Evidence of early fossils from this journey comes from the Domanishi location, just 12 miles (19 km) from Orosmani.
A 2011 study showed that the chemistry era of lava flows over Dmanisi and Orozmani, and that the site is around the same time. Both date to 1.825 million to 1,765 million years old.
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Excavations at Dmanisi over the past 30 years have revealed over 100 fossil bones, including five skulls. These skeletons showed that the earliest hominins to leave Africa were significantly shorter than Homo sapiens and had smaller brains. The Dmanisi skeleton was initially given the name Homo Georgicus, but is now considered to be the earliest known H. erectus individual in Eurasia.
Related: A footprint 1.5 million years ago revealed that our Homoerectus ancestors lived in the second Protohuman species
So far, there are not many Orosmani fossils that contain only one tooth and one jaw as in dmanisi. “We haven’t cleaned our jaw yet, so we haven’t compared it to Orosmani’s teeth in 2022,” Bidinashvili said.
However, the discovery of fossils in Orosmani suggests that Domanishi was not a unique site. It is possible that several early human groups settled in the Caucasus shortly after leaving Africa.
“We may see this move to Georgia not as an isolated incident, but there may have been a wider distribution of Homoerectus during this period,” Karen Baab, a biological anthropologist at Midwest University in Glendale, Arizona, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science.
The research team is trying to figure out whether one site is older than the other.
“Until there is a new date, we cannot confirm or deny that the human fossils of Orosmani are older than the Domanisi or the same period,” Bidinashvili said. “By the end of the year, we know.”
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