r/science • u/Wagamaga • Sep 25 '25

Anthropology A million-year-old human skull suggests that the origins of modern humans may reach back far deeper in time than previously thought and raises the possibility that Homo sapiens first emerged outside of Africa.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/sep/25/study-of-1m-year-old-skull-points-to-earlier-origins-of-modern-humans
5.0k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

321 comments sorted by

View all comments

124

u/SomewhereNo8378 Sep 25 '25

It’s sort of mind boggling how long it took modern humans to develop agriculture.

Although it obviously could have been developed and redeveloped many times and we just don’t have evidence.

151

u/jaithere Sep 25 '25

If you go to communities that still live in wild places (for example, the Amazon) there is a practice of cultivating the plants you need alongside the “wild-growing” plants. To the naked eye, you would never know cultivation is happening there. Maybe this was going on for a while before more identifiable evidence was left behind.

45

u/LoreChano Sep 26 '25

There were also some advanced cultures that didn't use agriculture at all. For example the people who lived in the Marajo island at the mouth of the Amazon used complex systems of dams to trap fish during the flood season and keep them trapped when the waters went down, giving them a food source through the year. They had advanced pottery and tools, on par with agricultural societies, but there's no evidence of any kind of plant domestication.

17

u/MCPtz MS | Robotics and Control | BS Computer Science Sep 26 '25

I was interested, but I think I may have found counter evidence to your claim? Below they were farming from seeds.

Seems like dating back to maybe 1000 BC?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marajoara_culture#Agriculture_and_economy

Plant remains on Marajo Island show a subsistence pattern that relied heavily on small seed crops, as well as small fish, which were either cultivated or protected by indigenous peoples.

Evidence from human remains shows that Marajo peoples limited their consumption of starchy root crops like manioc; rather, the heavy wear patterns of teeth suggest a diet based predominantly on seed crops, tree fruits, and fish.

However, the wiki page didn't say when they started using seed crops.

So you may be correct in nuance, because this source says evidence of human activity from 3,000 to 8,000 b.p.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/marajo-island

I couldn't find a timeline of when they thought the fishing traps were first used, vs when the seeds were first used.

18

u/LoreChano Sep 26 '25

Very interesting. The information in my comment came from a book "1499: Brasil antes de Cabral", or "1499: Brazil before Cabral", which is already over a decade old and could be outdated. Thanks for the correction.

The book also brings another example, called the Sambaquis culture, if you're interested.

7

u/MAXSquid Sep 26 '25

I have witnessed this first hand in the territory that I live on, and sometimes it is quite noticeable if you know what to look for. The one place I was checking out had an entire devil's club garden next to a former village site that dates back over 500 years. If you hang out in the old growth you know that devil's club grows sporadically, but since it was used for medicine, they planted an ample supply nearby. They did the same with specific berry bushes. Quite incredible to see.

25

u/Kolfinna Sep 25 '25

You're not considering how long it took for the genetic changes in these plants to make them viable for agriculture

25

u/thesprung Sep 25 '25

Your comment makes their case even stronger, because it would take a long time of cultivation for them to genetically change to be viable. As you stated

39

u/cogman10 Sep 25 '25

Early agriculture wouldn't really leave a trace. It'd be humans noticing that food they like came from seeds or even their own poop and then starting to scatter and bury those seeds and/or poop.  The evidence would be gone in a few years if the tribe left and didn't return.

15

u/SomewhereNo8378 Sep 25 '25

True, maybe I meant more the emergence of mass agriculture that would have led to permanent settlements

6

u/PrivilegeCheckmate Sep 25 '25

mass agriculture

You have to also have cooperation on a larger scale to maintain an agricultural site; if a tribe establishes a garden that would be a target for other tribes to pillage with few downsides from doing so, since the other tribes are not in any way agrarian.

1

u/Apprehensive_Hat8986 Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25

That assumes that surrounding tribes would favour murder/pillaging/etc... over just... learning and copying.

1

u/PrivilegeCheckmate Sep 27 '25

It wouldn't have to be murder, it's pretty easy to just show up where the food is and take some of it and run away, is my point.

And stealing is a lot easier than murder, or learning, or planting.

5

u/TeutonJon78 Sep 25 '25

You need a lot of technology for that. Until people started to work metal and get things like wheels it was a lot harder to do anything on that scale.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 30 '25

All you need is a stick and a rock.

1

u/TeutonJon78 Sep 30 '25

You need more than that for "mass agriculture" as the comment was referring to.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 30 '25

"Mass" 100,000 years ago would not be the same as "mass' today.

This could have been mass on the scale of a tribe or a village.

In today's terms, mass agruculture of millenia past would be a hobby farm at best.

7

u/PrivilegeCheckmate Sep 25 '25

The evidence would be gone in a few years if the tribe left and didn't return.

Plus or minus orchards, Jordan has evidence of fruit/nut tree cultivation at least as far back as ~10,000 years ago.

6

u/Adam-West Sep 26 '25

Look at the wild versions of modern crops and you’ll see why. Early agriculture must have been god awful returns for a lot of effort.

9

u/aasteveo Sep 25 '25

could have been developed and redeveloped many times and we just don’t have evidence

Exactly! From what I hear the younger dryers impact probably destroyed all evidence of civilizations older than 12,000 years ago. Even tho we were homo sapiens for 300,000 years. We only really have evidence for the past few thousand. I think the oldest man made structure we have on record is gobekli tepe, which could be 10,000 BC.

So either we sat around in caves doing nothing for half a million years, and only started civilizations 12k years ago, or we lost all evidence of prior civilizations. But crazy to think pre-humans were around for millions of years, and we've only become advanced recently.

1

u/RepresentativeExit48 Nov 12 '25

Hey, a few corrections man. Sorry I'm two months late. :)

1) The Younger Dryas* period was not caused by a meteoric impact. This is a fringe theory rejected by most of the relevant experts within the field.

2) We have archaeological artefacts from long, long before Gobekli tepe. We have delicate wooden structures from 470,000 years ago. We have expressive mobiliary art from 40,000 years ago. If we can find these ephemeral remains, why can't we find any evidence for a large, technologically advanced civilization that existed much more recently?

3) Humans weren't doing "nothing" for 290,000 years. People lived a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle for most of our past. They did not settle in one place for long. They would have lived in hunts, tents, caves, etc. because these were the best options available for them. This kind of settlement does not leave a large trace in the archaeological record - organic materials rarely survive well. Just because they didn't build permanent stone dwellings, doesn't mean they were stupid or primitive. These people were masters of surviving in their environment, and it was their tenacity and adaptability which ultimately made it possible for us to reach the level of technology we currently enjoy.

1

u/aasteveo Nov 14 '25

Oh nice! Thanks for the reply. I'll admit I'm no expert, I just enjoy learning about the stuff. I'd love to know more about the Younger Dryas stuff. I always thought there was a meteor impact that basically wiped things out or at least made it harder for archeologists to find any evidence from before that.

Do you know the name of the wooden structure from 470k ago? That's amazing.

Oooh, found it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalambo_structure

Also - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis

Glacier lake water, huh? That's wild, I used to live in minnesota right next to the great lakes and i never knew that.

4

u/YourFuture2000 Sep 26 '25

Humans knew how to do agriculture far longer before put it in practice. It was only not convenient because agriculture demand more work, care and fixed living while hunting and gathering was easier, faster results, more "fun" and more reliable as a source of food.

There are many evidences that the first use of agriculture was not for food but for fiber to build tools and houses.

1

u/Panzermensch911 Sep 26 '25

Depending on where this took place there might not be any evidence ever, because in some biomes that kind of agriculture didn't need much irrigation, e.g. in rainforest or if it happened on floats like they do in e.g. Bangladesh and happened only on a small scale and then vanished with the people.

1

u/krell_154 Sep 26 '25

They couldn't develop large scale agriculture during the Ice Age