Looking for the northern ape-man webpage 4/5

Text, photography: Annemieke van Roekel

Role of Europe in early human evolution
The idea behind the "Out-of-Europe" hypothesis is that several great ape species evolved on the Eurasian continent during the Miocene. Madelaine Böhme, paleontologist and climate scientist at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen: "Paleontologists often place the entire (early) human evolution, including that during the late Miocene, in tropical Africa, but there is hardly any data to provide evidence of this."

"Paleogenetics, which has made great strides in the last decade, shows that the division of the human lineage from the chimp lineage occurred over a time between 13 and 6 million years ago; for a long time both lineages must have lived side by side. Many Middle/Late Miocene fossils of early great apes from between 13-7 million years old have been found in Europe, not in Africa. For me, this is an important argument to search for fossil ancestors of chimps and humans on the Eurasian continent." Table 1 and fig. 12.

 

Table 1: Geological periods and great ape evolution. Early/Middle Miocene:1st phase of great ape evolution; Middle/Late Miocene: 2nd phase of great ape evolution; Late Miocene/Pliocene 3rd phase of great ape evolution. Source: Böhme 2020 p.77 /ICS 2018. Click on the table to enlarge.

Drought migration
According to Böhme, the Trachilos site is so important because so far no later fossils of possible hominin-ancestors have been found in Eurasia (Table 1). Hominini includes the living genera Homo and Pan (chimpanzees and bonobos) and a few more extinct primitive hominids. "That may be because we haven’t found the fossils yet, but in time Trachilos coincides with the Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC)." According to Böhme, the MSC had a major impact on the climate in the Northern Hemisphere (esp. the mid-latitudes, between 23 and 65 degrees North). This would have caused desertification on a large scale. Our distant ancestors would have migrated south to tropical regions during the MSC via the eastern Mediterranean, according to Böhme's hypothesis.


 

Fig. 12. Danuvius guggenmosi, a Late Miocene (11,6 Ma) great ape, of which bone fossils have been found by Böhme and her team in the Hammerschmiede clay pit in southern Germany. The animal had grasping feet, but its bones show it could walk upright, representing an early stage of bipedalism. No heel was found, only a big toe. Its teeth are similar to other European Late Miocene great apes. Ill.: Velizar Simeonovski in Böhme et al., 2019.

Böhme sees this possible migration of great apes at the time of the late Miocene in a broader context. Many African savannah animals have their origin in areas in the higher latitudes, in Eurasia, such as the white rhinoceros and the giraffe, which has long been known to have European roots. In a recent study (Böhme et al., 2021), she describes periods of extreme drought in the northern Arabian Peninsula at various time intervals during the late Miocene and Pliocene, initiating migration waves of large mammals. Fig. 13.

Böhme found evidence through sedimentary analysis of four short periods of desertification in the Middle East (Mesopotamia), each lasting several tens of thousands of years, with maxima between 9 and 6 my years ago. An exceptionally long period with a desert climate in the Middle East occurred between 5.6 and 2.3 million years ago, at the same time as the drying out of the Mediterranean, also referred to as the Neogen Arabian Desert Climax (NADX). During the NADX, many large mammal species would have migrated to Africa via the Levant, after which endemic diversification occurred. Thereafter, migration occurred in both directions. The Trachilos hominin was part of these waves of migration to Africa, according to Böhme.


 

Fig. 13. Fieldwork location in the Zagros Mountains in Iran (near Changuleh) is composed by continental sediments of the Agha Jari (or Injana) Formation. Photo: M. Böhme, with kind permission.

Page 1/5
Page 2/5
Page 3/5
Page 4/5 (this page)
Page 5/5

Copyright: Annemieke van Roekel
Last update: April 16, 2022