Discovery of 8.7m-year-old ape rewrites story of humanity

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. The Telegraph is overhyping this - it's the history of African apes, not "humanity"

"Africa has always been considered the cradle of mankind, with humans evolving from apes on the continent, before spreading to the rest of the world.

But an intriguing find is challenging the long-standing assumption."

No, it's not challenging that at all. Here's the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-023-05210-5

This is about the "hominines", which is gorillas, chimps, and humans, or the "African apes". These diverged from our common ancestors with orangutans (from Asia, of course) at some time and place (and the other apes, gibbons, which split earlier still, are also from Asia). Fossil apes from around this time have been found in Europe and Anatolia before, but not with any features that link specifically to the African apes that appeared a bit later. Now, this find has hominine features, and, being the earliest hominine found, they say the simplest explanation is that it, or close relatives, evolved in Anatolia, and then spread south to Africa (rather than a rather generally-featured ape moving to Africa, and evolving the hominine features there, and then some moving back to Anatolia).

The evolution into the separate gorilla, and chimp/human groups, and then the split between chimps and humans, are still placed in Africa.