Dmanisi skull finds bring human family together

One fossilised human homo erectus skull may be about to change the textbooks.

Excavated in Georgia, it is believed to be 1.8 million years old. Four other skulls at the same site make up a group that appears to disprove theories of several separate homo species emerging from Africa; simply, it may mean all the word’s peoples have one common ancestor.

“For scientists this means we have to change our perspective. Instead of our prediction that there were five different species existing 2 million years ago, we now have to assume that there was only one single species existing with a broad variety,” says Zurich University’s Prof. Christoph Zollikofer.

The Dmanisi collection is the earliest evidence of primitive humans outside Africa, and the biggest trove of well-preserved early-human remains known anywhere in the world. It will take years of research to give up all its secrets.