The Times - UK (2022-01-13)

the times | Thursday January 13 2022 13

News

The earliest known human skeleton
with modern facial features is 30,
years older than previously thought,
research has shown.
The Omo I fossil, discovered by the
palaeoanthropologist Richard Leakey
in Ethiopia in the 1960s, was already
regarded to be one of the earliest to
share the anatomy seen in our species
today. But For more than 50 years
debate had swirled over how old it actu-
ally was.
A study published yesterday in the
journal Nature has helped to clarify the
issue. By analysing ash that was spread
by an ancient volcanic eruption, a team
of researchers has been able to say that
the specimen is at least 230,000 years
old. It may be even earlier. It was pre-
viously thought to date from a mere
197,000 years ago.
There are older specimens that
appear to belong to the lineage of Homo
sapiens but they lack key anatomical
traits. “Omo I possesses unequivocal
modern human characteristics, such as
a tall and globular cranial vault and a

patrick kidd

TMS

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Best woman

for the job

As the vultures begin to circle

over Downing Street, could the

next prime minister be another

flaxen-haired Tory? No, not Liz

Truss despite her surname being

the answer of the day recently on

Wordle, the latest online fad.

Some would pay well for that

support. Could an old campaigner

be planning a return? One of my

elves was in a pub at the weekend

and overheard Andrea Leadsom

talking up her own credentials.

Apparently getting a damehood

last year might help and she feels

that if she behaves herself while

Boris Johnson implodes the party

will look to her as an experienced

contender not tarred by being in

his cabinet. It would be her third

shot at the leadership, having

stood in 2016 and 2019. Leadsom,

below, certainly has the sunshine

outlook of vintage Boris but

without the dodgy back catalogue,

though one should never forget

she once called Jane Austen “one

of our greatest living authors”.

Nicola Sturgeon will be devastated

if Johnson resigns since he is the

SNP’s biggest asset. So toxic is he in

Scotland that a group of senior

Tories there formed a pressure

group in 2018 to lobby Westminster

MPs never to let him become

leader. “We called it Operation

Arse,” one said, “so we’d be all clear

who we were talking about.”

brought to book

A story on Saturday reported

that dons at Christ Church,

Oxford, have been warned by

the Charity Commission that

they face jail if they mislead its

inquiry into their expensive

dispute with the college’s

dean. This amused

Jonathan Aitken, an

alumnus of “The House”,

who has experience of

both sides of prison bars

as lag and chaplain. One head of a

rival college joked to him that he

was going to order 65 copies of

Aitken’s new book on surviving a

prison sentence and send them to

the Christ Church dons with a

note saying: “You may need this.”

making waves

Richard Drax, a Tory backbencher,

told MPs that on a recent visit to

the Special Boat Service he was

“shocked” to discover they didn’t

have a proper aquatic centre. The

government could not say when

they would get one. Presumably,

like their Royal Navy colleagues

who were once told to save money

by shouting “bang” when they

pretend to fire guns in training, the

SBS have to whisper “splash” as

they mime slipping into the water.

The Downing Street bring-a-bottle

brainstorming session is bad but the

historian Tom Holland says it is

only the second worst behaviour by

a British government during a

pandemic. In 1665 Charles II moved

his court to Oxford, where one

witness recorded that they “left their

excrements in every corner, in

chimneys, studies, coalhouses [and]

cellars”. Sounds like they were just

going through the motions.

for the record

Tony Blackburn caused a stir when

he arrived at the BBC with his

casual approach to broadcasting.

He tells Iain Dale’s All Talk that

when he was given a try-out as a

DJ on the old Light Programme a

producer asked him to come in

early to discuss his script.

Blackburn replied that he didn’t

have one. “I just ad lib,” he said. “I

don’t know what I’m going to

say.” The producer considered

this and allowed it with one

condition. “Would you mind

still coming in at least an hour

before the programme?”

he asked. “Otherwise

I’ll have to cancel

the coffee and

doughnuts.”

A reconstruction of the Homo

sapiens skull found in the 1960s

Bless his creaking bones, Man just got 30,000 years older

Rhys Blakely Science Correspondent chin,” Dr Aurélien Mounier from the
Museum of Man in Paris, a co-author of
the study, said.
“The new date estimate... makes it
the oldest unchallenged Homo sapiens
in Africa.”
The chin still remains something of
an enigma, however. Evolutionary the-
orists struggle to say why humans,
unique among animals, have a bony
protuberance at the end of the jaw.
Some suggest it evolved as a form of
sexual signifier; others that it helps with
speech or chewing.
The Omo I remains were found in
the Omo Kibish Formation in south-
western Ethiopia, within the East
African Rift valley. The region is an
area of high volcanic activity, and is a
rich source of early human remains and
artefacts such as stone tools.
Using new analytic techniques, the
scientists were able to link the thick
volcanic ash layer in which Omo I was
found with an eruption of Shala
volcano, more than 250 miles away.
The researchers say that while this
study shows a new minimum age for
Homo sapiens in eastern Africa, it is

possible that new finds and new studies

may extend the age of our species even

further back in time.

“These fossils show how resilient

humans are: that we survived, thrived

and migrated in an area so prone

to natural disasters,” said Dr

Céline Vidal of Cambridge

University.

Clive Oppenheimer, a

professor of volcanology

at Cambridge, said that it

was probably no coinci-

dence that our earliest an-

cestors lived in such a

geologically active rift valley.

“The volcanoes provided fan-

tastic materials to make stone tools and

from time to time we had to develop our

cognitive skills when large eruptions

transformed the landscape,” he said.

Professor Christine Lane of the Cam-

bridge Tephra Laboratory, where

much of the work was carried

out, added: “Our forensic ap-

proach provides a new min-

imum age for Homo

sapiens in eastern Africa.

The challenge remains to

provide a maximum age

for their emergence.”

Timeline of human evolution

6 5 million to 7 million years ago:

human lineage splits from

chimpanzees

6 550,000 to 750,000 years ago:

Homo sapiens lineage begins

6 300,000 years ago: Homo

sapiens lineage in Morocco

6 230,000 years ago: Omo I lives in

Ethiopia

6 100,000 to 210,000 years ago:

humans live outside Africa

6 45,000 years ago: modern

humans reach northern Europe AAAA reco

sapiens

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