Hominid Skulls Found in Caucasus

W A S H I N G T O N, May 12, 2000 -- Three skulls dug from under amedieval town in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and dating back 1.7 million years mayrepresent the first pre-humans who migrated out of Africa andinto Europe, researchers said on Thursday.

The skulls look like those of early humans who lived in EastAfrica at the same time, and a wealth of tools found at the sitelook like tools made by the African pre-humans.

Previously Thought Too Primitive

This is surprising because archaeologists had believed thespecies of hominid, called Homo ergaster, was too primitive tohave made the long and difficult journey from African savanna tothe challenging terrain of Europe.

“These constitute the first well-documented humans thatcame out of Africa,” Reid Ferring, a geologist andarchaeologist at the University of North Texas at Denton whoworked on the study, said in a telephone interview.

“We suggest that these hominids may represent the samespecies that initially dispersed from Africa and from which theAsian branch of H. erectus was derived,” the team of U.S.,Georgian, French and German scientists wrote in their report,published in the journal Science.

“We are dealing with people who are very closely related tofolks in East Africa at the time,” Ferring said.

The finding suggests the hominids moved quickly out ofAfrica across the Levant, what is now Syria and Lebanon, intoTurkey and up into Georgia.

Ferring said Homo ergaster falls in between the moreprimitive Homo habilis and Homo erectus, a robust creature withadvanced stone tools that just about everyone thought was thefirst to move out of Africa to populate Asia and Europe.

Jump Out of Africa?

It had been assumed that hominids had to develop morephysically and technologically to make the jump out of Africainto the strange and extreme terrain of Eurasia.

“It appears that people were ready to get out of Africaearlier than we thought,” Ferring said.

“In my mind, also, they were advanced in ways that don’tshow up in their stone tools,” he added. This would include theuse of wood, but also social development.

The hominids would have had to be organised to survive at3,000-foot elevations, where it snows heavily inwinter. “We are not in Africa at all,” Ferring said.

And there would have been lots of them. “It looks like thiswas a pretty substantial occupation. These people made a lot oftools,” Ferring said. “It raises the issue of were thesepeople hunters.”

A Lucky Find

Susan Anton of the University of Florida in Gainesvillethinks it is probable.

“The argument that we’re making is that during that time inAfrica, the savanna is expanding and there is a greateravailability of ‘protein on the hoof.’” she said in astatement.

“With the appearance of Homo, we see bigger bodies thatrequire more energy to run, and therefore need these higher-quality sources of protein as fuel.”

The researchers had a run of luck, first in finding that thesite, at Dmanisi, about 50 miles southwest of Tblisi,was so intact.

“It was a very nice surprise to find these skulls,” saidDavid Lordkipanidze of the Republic of Georgia State Museum.They were in good enough condition to compare them with EastAfrican finds, a happy event for researchers who often havelittle more than splintery fragments to work with.

Magnetic Flip-Flop Provides Clues

And the site, under a medieval town built on layers ofbasalt laid down during volcanic activity 1.85 million yearsago, offered many clues as to its age. One was provided by theperiodic flip-flopping of the Earth’s magnetic poles, whichleaves a record in the rock.

“We know that 1.78 million years ago the poles shifted fromnormal to reverse,” Ferring said.

The basalt is “normal” but the deposits on top whichcontain the artifacts and remains are reversed.

This geomagnetic evidence helped them check the otherevidence provided by traditional dating of layers and byradiographic dating.

The dates alone would make the hominids the first in Europe.“I don’t think anyone, pushed into a corner, would say theseare the first, because someone will always come along next weekand find something even older,” Ferring stressed. “We don’twant to get into a ‘first’ game.”