Southeastern Europe’s Oldest-Known Human Ancestor Fossil Found in Serbia

Feb 8, 2013 by Sergio Prostak
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According to a research published in the open access journal PLoS ONE, a 400k year old fragment of human lower jaw recovered from a Serbian cave is the oldest human ancestor found in this part of Europe.

Top: artist’s reconstruction of human ancestors (SINC / José Antonio Peñas). Bottom: a human lower jaw found in a cave near Balanica, Serbia (Mirjana Roksandic)

The fossil, labeled BH-1, was found to be at least 397,000 years old and possibly older than 525,000 years old, a time when distinctly Neanderthal traits began to appear in Europe.

The evolution of these traits was strongly influenced by periodic isolation of groups of individuals, caused by episodic formation of glaciers.

“On the basis of preserved morphology, BH-1 differs significantly from Middle Pleistocene European hominins generally grouped under Homo heidelbergensis. It exhibits primitive features such as a prominent planum alveolare, thick mandibular corpus, wide exomolar sulcus, flat rather than concave sublingual fossa, and poorly defined relief of the submandibular fossa,” authors wrote.

“There is a complete lack of derived Neandertal features… Given the size of the mandibular body, the dentition is relatively small, and fits well with Middle Pleistocene European specimens.”

Humans in southeastern Europe were never geographically isolated from Asia and Africa by glaciers, and according to the authors, this resulted in different evolutionary forces acting on early human populations in this region.

“The study confirms the importance of southeast Europe as a ‘gate to the continent’ and one of the three main areas where humans, plants and animals sought refuge during glaciations in prehistoric times,” said senior author Dr Mirjana Roksandic of the University of Winnipeg, Canada.

“We have very few fossils of hominins in general from this time, a period that was critical for shaping the appearance and evolution of uniquely human morphology and behaviors,” she said.

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Bibliographic information: Rink WJ et al. 2013. New Radiometric Ages for the BH-1 Hominin from Balanica (Serbia): Implications for Understanding the Role of the Balkans in Middle Pleistocene Human Evolution. PLoS ONE 8(2): e54608; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0054608

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  • Phil Rounds

    Hmmm. The picture shows a shave-headed Neanderthal. Something i would assume would be unlikely, given the climate conditions they lived in.

    • ope2244

      Is that a joke? They have been found all over Southern and Central Europe. The ice ages came and went, before and after the Neanderthals?

    • Ice_Kold

      Maybe he was bald? :D

  • deowll

    Hh had wooden spears, Hsn had stone tipped spears, I know that some Hsn had the genes for male pattern baldness but that is a little extreme, the Cro-Magnon would most likely have been rather darker with rather curly hair.

  • neverhome

    The guy in the middle of the first image… Is that Vin Diesel?

    • marcosebastian

      Naw, it’s your mom’s ancestor dude.

      • neverhome

        Not possible. None of the men on Mom’s side were bald.

  • ZenkTink

    That actually looks like it might be poretty cool. Wow.

    GlobalAnon.da.bz

  • http://twitter.com/BluebonnetTX BluebonnetTX

    Maybe the Neanderthal was embarrassed by his male pattern baldness and shaved his head. Vanity was alive and well even back then.

  • RyanGosling_yep_its_me

    Anyone else here mirin’ dat Cro-Magnon stature? We need to clone Cro-Magnons to recover from the physiological and cognitive degeneration wrought by overcivilization.

  • Curious

    I’d be interested to know the dating method used to determine the age of the jaw. Perhaps the rocks it was found in?

    • http://twitter.com/stevor_h steve holmes

      Me too but I then want to know how they dated the rocks.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Tesla-Berry/100003892763288 Tesla Berry

    studies have been done showing that paleontoligists have ROUTINELY mis-identified many many dinsosaur skeletons of juveniles as adults of ‘new’ species’ our knowledge about ‘primitive’ man is based on a FAR FAR smaller sample set of archeological remains than we have found from dinosaurs because dinosaurs were plentiful and everywhere and huge, and mankind was not plentiful , not everywhere, and small. dinsosaurs of many many species existed over milliions of years, ‘mankind’ existed as fewer ‘species’ and even if you include the ‘primate’ record of fossils, it really pales in comparison to the dinosaur record.

    so how much do we really ‘know’ about the subtleties of man’s ancestral evolution based on the limited remains we’ve seen, and how much less objective and reasonable will be our conclusions based on our anthropic history versus the history of a species we are supposedly more disinterested in.

    I am saying—-these discoveries are awesome, but never forget that time itself has wiped away most of the record from ever being fully discoverable. while our efforts to know our history are not only laudable but NECESSARY, let us not get carried away in our conclusions. and always remember, the past is the past, and our real workable knowledge can only ever be about the present.
    semper heidelbergensis!

    • http://twitter.com/stevor_h steve holmes

      Yeah. It’s funny how they created a whole “human” from a tooth and that tooth ended up being that of a PIG.

  • http://twitter.com/stevor_h steve holmes

    So, HOW was this dated? It couldn’t be carbon dating! I guess it was dated as to the soil it was found in but I then ask how the soil was dated.

  • TimWebb

    Science, so-called, is driven by a hidden agenda, rather than by facts. If you dig a little deeper than you are encouraged to go, you will find for example, that the “Big Bang” theory-which-masquerades-as-fact actually first appeared in Kabbalic statements of the first century AD. Rabbi Ha Kana expanded the idea and came to his 15 billion year estimate of the age of the universe by juggling the 42 letters of the Name of God. Notwithstanding, his evidence-free assertion is now accepted by “modern science”. As such therefore, it becomes increasingly clear that “modern science” is just as much of a religious endeavour as overt religion, the only difference being that it keeps its true nature under wraps. NASA for example, admits that its space programme is designed to seek out our true origins, which it imagines to have been amongst the stars. This, you will note, is a metaphysical question. Your only real choice therefore is between two competing religious views of your origin. One is based on lies, the other on facts. The facts are spelled out for you in the Word of God, and are given to you free of charge. The lies have been contrived over innumerable generations, and at enormous expense.
    Given that the substance of the universe is composed of a material whose origin is a complete mystery ( unless you accept the obvious conclusion) then even the random mutations which are supposed to drive evolution will be acting on a basic fabric whose origins cannot have been predicated upon such mechanisms.
    If however at this point you invoke the “multiverse” notion, be aware that the rabbis have been there before you. They imagined a ten-layered universe, ( but neglected to prove it experimentally.)
    Some here point out that carbon dating cannot realistically be used to assess the age of the ancient bone fragments which are the subject matter of this piece. Others have recently discovered that emanations from the sun can affect the rate of radioactive decay, thereby throwing this dating method, and by implication all of the others too, into disarray.

    In closing, let me set you a question. We are reliably informed by the 9 interwoven and interdependent assumptions of the Copernican theory-masquerading-as-fact that the
    earth has an unwavering and presumably gyroscopically-maintained axial tilt of 23 degrees; this explains the seasons. How therefore does the Pole Star remain at the due north position throughout the year, when this could only be the case if earth were constantly changing its axial tilt towards Polaris as it orbits the sun?

    “The sun ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose”.
    Note, the presence of the active sense of the verbs, as here utilised.

  • http://www.DaftGadgets.com Jason Scott

    That Cromag doesn’t look anything like the documentary “sliders” with Jerry O’connell.

  • Jai Hind

    Europe has a reputation of ‘FOOLING THE WORLD’.This is another one of that.