Emerging complications in the tale of human evolution

New species of ancient human discovered in Philippines cave

A new species of ancient human, thought to have been under 4ft tall and adapted to climbing trees, has been discovered in the Philippines, providing a twist in the story of human evolution.

The specimen, named Homo luzonensis, was excavated from Callao cave on Luzon island in the northern Philippines and has been dated to 50,000-67,000 years ago – when our own ancestors and the Neanderthals were spreading across Europe and into Asia.

Florent Détroit, of the Natural History Museum in Paris and the paper’s first author, said the discovery provided the latest challenge to the fairly straightforward prevalent narrative of human evolution.

It was once thought that no humans left Africa until about 1.5 million years ago, when a large-bodied ancient human called Homo erectus set off on a dispersal that ultimately allowed it to occupy territory spanning Africa and Spain, China and Indonesia.

Then, according to the traditional narrative, after a few hundred-thousand years of not much happening, our own ancestors dispersed from Africa about 50,000 years ago.

“We now know that it was a much more complex evolutionary history, with several distinct species contemporaneous with Homo sapiens, interbreeding events, extinctions,” said Détroit. 

“Homo luzonensis is one of those species and we will [increasingly see] that a few thousand years back in time, Homo sapiens was definitely not alone on Earth.”

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It is not known whether the new species, along with the ‘hobbit’, represent earlier dispersals from Africa than Homo erectus, or whether they are descendants who later shrank and evolved new anatomical traits.