Western Europe has a new oldest face: the facial bones of an adult nicknamed “Pink” discovered in Spain are from a potential new member of the human family who lived more than 1.1 million years ago, scientists said Wednesday.
Until now, the oldest-known human species in Western Europe was the slender-faced Homo antecessor, dating back around 850,000 years.
But research published in the journal Nature “introduces a new actor in the history of human evolution in Europe,” lead study author Rosa Huguet of Spain’s University of Rovira i Virgili told a press conference.
Photo: AFP
The fossilized upper jawbone and partial cheekbone of Pink were discovered at the Atapuerca archaeological site in northern Spain in 2022.
Since then, a team of Spanish scientists have been working to find out more about Pink, whose nickname is a reference to prog rock band Pink Floyd.
The bones were excavated from a layer of silt and red mud 16 meters deep at a site known as Sima del Elefante — or “elephant pit”.
Photo: AFP
They were found less than 250 meters from where the fossils of Western Europe’s previous oldest human, Homo antecessor, were discovered nearly two decades ago.
But the title of oldest human in all of Europe is still held by the Dmanisi people — also called Homo georgicus — who lived up to 1.8 million years ago in what is now Georgia.
They were the first members of the human family, or hominins, known to have made it to Europe from Africa, the cradle of humanity. We modern Homo sapiens first showed up in Africa around 300,000 years ago — and took our time getting to Europe.
FACE VALUE
The Spanish researchers used 3D imaging techniques to flesh out Pink’s full face.
Homo antecessor had a “very modern” face which is “vertical and flat” similar to our own, said Maria Martinon-Torres, director of Spain’s National Research Center on Human Evolution.
But Pink’s face is more “projected forward and more robust,” the study co-author added.
This means it bears some similarities to the face of Homo erectus — but not enough that the scientists could confirm that Pink was a member of this important human ancestor.
So the scientists made up a new name for the possible species that Pink could belong to: Homo affinis erectus.
“This is the most honest proposal we can make with the evidence we have,” Martinon-Torres said.
From just a few face bones, the researchers could not determine Pink’s age or gender.
But by analyzing small stone tools and animals bones found at the site, they were able to get an idea of the environment Pink lived in.
It was a humid forest landscape, roamed by horses, ancient cattle, monkeys and even some hippos.
The area was a wildlife corridor with plenty of water, making it an “ideal” place for our ancient relatives to settle, Huguet said.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM?
The new discovery supports the hypothesis that early humans settled Europe going from east to west at least 1.4 million years ago, according to the Spanish researchers. If Pink is a representative of a previously unknown human species, it could have been a bridge between the Dmanisi hominins and Homo antecessors, they added.
But this raises another question: what became of these people?
Spanish paleoanthropologist Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro felt that Pink’s people likely did not survive a severe human “bottleneck” nearly 900,000 years ago thought to have been caused by global cooling.
“I think that Homo affinis erectus probably disappeared,” the study co-author said.
Future research will aim to shed light on these mysteries. The Spanish team has not yet reached the bottom of the elephant pit — nor other sites around it.
One of the most important gripes that Taiwanese have about the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is that it has failed to deliver concretely on higher wages, housing prices and other bread-and-butter issues. The parallel complaint is that the DPP cares only about glamor issues, such as removing markers of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) colonialism by renaming them, or what the KMT codes as “de-Sinification.” Once again, as a critical election looms, the DPP is presenting evidence for that charge. The KMT was quick to jump on the recent proposal of the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) to rename roads that symbolize
On the evening of June 1, Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) apologized and resigned in disgrace. His crime was instructing his driver to use a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon. The Control Yuan is the government branch that investigates, audits and impeaches government officials for, among other things, misuse of government funds, so his misuse of a government vehicle was highly inappropriate. If this story were told to anyone living in the golden era of swaggering gangsters, flashy nouveau riche businessmen, and corrupt “black gold” politics of the 1980s and 1990s, they would have laughed.
It was just before 6am on a sunny November morning and I could hardly contain my excitement as I arrived at the wharf where I would catch the boat to one of Penghu’s most difficult-to-access islands, a trip that had been on my list for nearly a decade. Little did I know, my dream would soon be crushed. Unsure about which boat was heading to Huayu (花嶼), I found someone who appeared to be a local and asked if this was the right place to wait. “Oh, the boat to Huayu’s been canceled today,” she told me. I couldn’t believe my ears. Surely,
When Lisa, 20, laces into her ultra-high heels for her shift at a strip club in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, she knows that aside from dancing, she will have to comfort traumatized soldiers. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, exhausted troops are the main clientele of the Flash Dancers club in the center of the northeastern city, just 20 kilometers from Russian forces. For some customers, it provides an “escape” from the war, said Valerya Zavatska — a 25-year-old law graduate who runs the club with her mother, an ex-dancer. But many are not there just for the show. They “want to talk about what hurts,” she
RSS