Homo sapiens idaltu: characteristics of this possible human subspecies

What was Homo sapiens idaltu? Let's take a look at the characteristics of this branch of human evolution.

Throughout the history of paleoanthropology, all kinds of bones have been found, both of primordial humans and of species from which we either descended or which evolved in parallel to ours but became extinct.

However, the bones of Homo sapiens idaltuhuman remains found in EthiopiaHowever, the bones of Homo sapiens idaltu, human remains found in Ethiopia, seemed to be the proof of a missing link between extinct humans and present humans, although generating a real controversy in the scientific community.

Let's see below who these hominids were and why so much controversy was generated.

What is the Homo sapiens idaltu?

The Homo sapiens idaltualso known as Herto man, was, according to the current view of the scientific community, a subspecies of Homo sapiens. The remains of this hominid were found in Ethiopia in 1997 and, although they are considered to belong to our species, the remains presented morphological characteristics that made them significantly different from how humans are today but not enough to consider them a separate species.

The scientific name of this species, Homo sapiens idaltuas can be seen is trinominal. In taxonomy, trinominal names are used to refer to subspecies, the two words being the genus and the species-specific name, while the third word refers to its subspecies. In this case, Homo refers to hominids, "sapiens" to the fact that it is part of the human species (sapiens in Latin means wise) and idaltu is a word in Amharic, the language of the region where it was discovered, which means "old man".

Discovery

The Homo sapiens idaltu was discovered in Herto Bouri, which is why it is colloquially called Herto man. This region is in Ethiopia, near the middle Awash in the Afar depression, areas characterized by layers of volcanic origin underneath, with an age of between 154,000 and 160,000 years.

The discovery was made in 1997 by the paleoanthropological team of Tim White, Berhane Asfaw and Giday Wolde-Gabriel, scientists from the University of California at Berkeley and the Natural History Museum in London. Although the find was made in the 1990s, the discovery would be made public several years later, in 2003.The remains correspond to the skulls of three individuals, two adult males and a child.

These remains correspond to the skulls of three individuals, two adult males and a child. The age of these skeletal remains is 158,000 years old.living in the prehistoric Chibanian or middle Pleistocene period. Their finding was really important, since up to that time there was a gap in the human fossil record, lacking intermediate fossils between pre-humans and modern humans, in the period from 300,000 to 100,000 before our era.

The remains of Homo sapiens idaltu were considered the oldest specimens of the species Homo sapiens until 2005. In that year, the Omo I and Omo II fossils were found, the remains of Homo sapiens sapiens fossils were found, with an age of 195,000 years. Subsequently, in 2017, human fossils were discovered in Morocco at Jebel Irhoud, dating back 315,000 years.

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Morphology and taxonomy

The remains of Homo sapiens idaltu differ from chronologically later forms of the earliest Homo sapiens. In fact, the Herto men possess features reminiscent of other hominid species found in Africa.

The three skulls found fit quite closely with the skull shape of modern Homo sapiens, especially in the globular shape of the skull and face. Yet they possess distinctive features that have led them to be considered a subspecies different from our own. These features are visible in the supraciliary arch, as well as having a more robust constitution and a very projected occipital protuberance..

One of the features that makes them stand out is that they do not present prognathism, something common in Neanderthals. This led the experts to confirm that these remains did not belong to the Homo neanderthalensis. This gave strength to the idea that the first sapiens evolved in Africa long before the European Neanderthals disappeared, refuting the idea of the "Neanderthal phase" in human evolution.

The conclusion to the finding is that they are a transition from the most primitive African hominids to modern humans. Based on the traits, the scientific community considers the Homo sapiens idaltu a subspecies of Homo sapiens extinctwhich must have been our direct ancestors of the current human species, defending the idea of the theory of recent African origin.

Below we will see in a little more detail the morphological characteristics of these three skulls.

BOU-VP-16/1

This is a nearly complete skull of an adult, with a cranial capacity of about cranial capacity of about 1450 cubic centimeters.. This is truly amazing, given that this cranial capacity is greater than that of many modern humans.

BOU-VP-16/2

It corresponds to another adult skull, although not as complete as the first one. Its size could be even larger than the previous one.

BOU-VP-16/5

This skull is that of a child. It must have been between 6 or 7 years old, estimated from the teeth, with a cranial capacity of 1250 cubic centimeters. It was fragmented in more than 200 pieces, and a meticulous reconstruction was necessary to analyze it.

Controversy

The discovery of this hominid subspecies sparked controversy among researchers in the field of paleontology. Critics considered that the Homo sapiens idaltu was nothing more than a normal human being, like those of the current species of Homo sapiensbut which possessed some archaic morphological feature..

That trait, compared to that of other fossils of Homo sapiensThis feature, compared to that of other Homo sapiens fossils, led one to think that they were a different subspecies, when perhaps in fact they were simply different. An example of remains of Homo sapiens with striking features are Cro-Magnon men and Grimaldi men, but these hominids are not considered subspecies of sapiens.

It must be said that the scientific community has problems in establishing when two populations are two different subspecies. The morphological traits may not be sufficiently different to affirm that two individuals are not part of the same evolutionary lineage.. In fact, this was observed by Chris Stringer in 2003, when the discovery of Homo sapiens idaltu came to light. Stringer said in an article in Nature magazine that the skulls did not seem to have such different features as to consider Herto man a subspecies of Homo sapiens.

To this day, although the trinomial name and the idea that it is a subspecies has been retained, debate continues. In fact, the use of this name is controversial, since, if the thesis that Homo sapiens idaltu is a subspecies is correct, it is still controversial. Homo sapiens idaltu is a subspecies of ours, we would have to rescue the old denomination of Homo sapiens sapiens to refer to present-day human individuals.

The term Homo sapiens sapiens was used in the past when Neanderthal man was thought to be a human subspecies rather than a hominid species different from our own. Likewise, it must be said that the statement that humans and Neanderthals are different species is still debated, since it has been proven that when both types of hominids coincided in evolutionary history, there were crosses that gave rise to fertile hybrids. In fact, the European population has Neanderthal genes in its genotype.

Bibliographical references:

• Smith, Fred H.; Ahern, James C. (2013). The Origins of Modern Humans: Biology Reconsidered. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-118-65990-8.
• White, Tim D.; Asfaw, Berhane; DeGusta, David; Gilbert, Henry; Richards, Gary D.; Suwa, Gen; Clark Howell, F. (2003). Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia. Nature 423 (6941): 742-747.
• Stringer, Chris (2003). "Human evolution: Out of Ethiopia". Nature 423 (6941): 693-695.