The oldest known remains of the human species have been discovered in Morocco, scientists announced earlier this week.
According to a study published in the journal Nature, fossils extracted from an archaeological site in Morocco turned out to be the oldest known remains of Homo sapiens - the only extant human species.
The New York Times notes that the findings "rewrite the story of mankind’s origins", as they suggest that humans evolved in multiple locations across the African continent.
The theory suggesting that humans arose from a "cradle of humankind" in East Africa 200,000 years ago has thus been debunked.
Prior to the discovery, the oldest known fossils of our species dated back 195,000 years.
However, the fossils discovered in Jebel Irhoud, an archaeological site located about 100 kilometers west of Marrakesh, are roughly 300,000 years old.
“My reaction was a big ‘wow’,” said Jean-Jacques Hublin, a senior scientist on the team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, according to The Guardian. “I was expecting them to be old, but not that old.”
Early studies had suggested that humans evolved in a small region in East Africa. But, the Moroccan fossils prove otherwise, indicating that humans originated from different locations across the African continent.
"We did not evolve from a single ‘cradle of mankind’ somewhere in East Africa," said Philipp Gunz, an anthropologist and a co-author of two new studies on the fossils, according to New York Times. “We evolved on the African continent.”
The study also revealed that the faces of early Homo sapiens were very similar to those of modern humans, but their brains differed fundamentally.
Their brains were as big as those of modern humans, yet they did not have a round shape but were rather elongated.
The study also found that the people of Jebel Irhoud made fires to cook food and crafted complex weapons to hunt animals, such as wooden handled spears.