Out of Africa? First humans actually came from Europe

THE history of human evolution may be rewritten after scientists claimed the birth of mankind happened in Europe, not Africa.

Most experts believe our human lineage split from apes around seven million years ago in central Africa, where hominids remained for the next five million years.

But two fossils of an ape-like creature which had human-like teeth have been found in Bulgaria and Greece, dating to 7.2 million years ago.

The discovery of the creature named Graecopithecus freybergi, and nicknamed “El Graeco” by scientists, proves our ancestors were starting to evolve in Europe 200,000 years before the earliest African hominid.

An international team of researchers says the findings change entirely the start of human history and place the last common ancestor of both chimpanzees and humans – the so-called Missing Link – in the Mediterranean region.

At that time, climate change had turned eastern Europe into an open savannah that forced apes to find new food, prompting a shift towards bipedalism, the researchers believe.

“This study changes the ideas related to the time and the place of the first steps of the humankind,” said Prof Nikolai Spassov, from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

Prof David Begun, a co-author of the study from the University of Toronto, added: “This dating allows us to move the human-chimpanzee split into the Mediterranean area.”

However, some experts were more sceptical. Retired anthropologist and author Dr Peter Andrews, formerly at the Natural History Museum in London, said: “I would be hesitant about using a single character from an isolated fossil to set against the evidence for Africa.” (© Daily Telegraph, London)