Broken Skull Found in Greece Is ‘Oldest Human Fossil’ Outside of Africa

A piece of skull unearthed in Greece has been identified by scientists as the earliest modern human outside of Africa, BBC News reports. A 210,000-year-old partial modern human skull was recovered from Apidima Cave in Greece in the 1970s, along with the skull of a younger Neanderthal. Scientists reportedly determined the skull to be a modern human’s through the “rounded back to the skull” and other characteristics unique to our species. The discovery adds evidence to the thought that there may have been an earlier migration of modern humans from Africa, at a time when Europe was predominantly populated by Neanderthals. The findings were published in the science journal Nature. C0-author Prof. Chris Stringer said the evidence could point to a situation where an “early modern group in Greece” was “replaced by a Neanderthal population” about 40,000 years later.