Homo Sapiens: Child of the Ice Age

We are now: Homo Sapiens

Megadrought Africa

135,000 years before present

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The Anthropocene begins

This reconstructed skull is the earliest fragment of a modern human—Homo sapiens—ever discovered. The Omo Kibish remains are 195,000 years old.

By 135,000 years ago, humans we would recognize as us—Homo sapiens—were living in Africa. In fact, the earliest confirmed evidence of modern humans is from 195,000 years ago. In 1967, Dr. Richard Leakey discovered the remains of the Omo Kibish skeleton at a site in southern Ethiopia. More recently, Professor Pamela Willoughby at the University of Alberta discovered modern human teeth in a rock shelter in Tanzania that may be over 200,000 years old. If confirmed, these will be the oldest remains of Homo sapiens ever discovered.

The African Kalahari is the best place on Earth to get a window on our past as nomadic hunter gatherers. The indigenous Khoisan population, or Bushmen, are the most ancient genetic lineage we know of. Their ancestors split with other humans before we left Africa, and they’ve remained hunter-gatherers ever since. The way they live in their extremely dry environment today can teach us a lot about how our own ancestors survived the ever-shifting climates of our original African homelands.

These are the Ju/wa, Bushmen who live in the Nhoma River region of northeast Namibia.

Humans were uniquely good at adapting to new environments, like semi-arid deserts.

Sketch of modern Homo sapiens from roughly 200,000 years ago, by Jay Maternes.

Before long, a climate catastrophe strikes

Near extinction for Homo sapiens

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The human population “bottleneck”

Beginning 195,000 years ago, the global climate entered a period of cold and dry conditions that lasted for 70,000 years, a phase called Marine Isotope Stage 6. In interior Africa, this shift triggered drought conditions so severe that much of the continent would have become uninhabitable. Genetic studies of modern human DNA tell us that at some point during this period, human populations plummeted from more than 10,000 breeding individuals to as few as 600. Homo sapiens became a highly endangered species; we almost went extinct. This “population bottleneck” means that all humans alive today are descended from this tiny group of survivors. The result: our species has less genetic diversity than a single troupe of West Africa chimpanzees.

The African superdrought was caused by a long, cold period between 192,000 and 130,000 years ago.

Dr. Rick Potts

Director of the Human Origins Program
Smithsonian Institution

During the superdrought, humans were an endangered species.

But there is still one place in Africa good for life

The sea saves humanity

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When climate disaster struck our ancestors in Africa’s interior, small populations seem to have resettled to Africa’s coasts. The climate stability and vastly greater access to land and marine foods on the coasts may have saved these few human survivors; it was on the coasts that humanity crawled back from the brink of extinction. But the relative ease of life on the coasts also triggered a new way of life, characterized by more sophisticated tools and a more intensely social life.

The excavations at South Africa’s Pinnacle Point have revealed human occupation beginning when our species faced near extinction.

The excavations at Pinnacle Point suggest the beginnings of language, roughly 75,000 years ago.

Curtis Marean

Archaeologist
Arizona State University

The coastal environment along the Cape Coast is rich in land and marine foods.

Donald Johanson is most famous for his electrifying discovery of the 3.2m-year–old fossil hominid “Lucy” in 1974, giving us the first glimpse of our species during that transition from tree-climbing ancients to bipedal walkers. Here, Johanson gives us his take on the biggest questions now facing scientists in the in the field of human origins.