Govind Tekale
A newly reconstructed skull from China is forcing scientists to rethink when humans began to evolve. The fossil, about one million years old, suggests our species may have started emerging much earlier than previously thought.
The skull, known as Yunxian 2, was unearthed in Hubei Province, China in 1990. Initially, researchers believed it belonged to Homo erectus, an earlier human ancestor. However, advanced digital reconstruction has revealed features that place it in a different group.
“This changes a lot of thinking because it suggests that by one million years ago, our ancestors had already split into distinct groups, pointing to a much earlier and more complex human evolutionary split than previously believed,” said Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist from London’s Natural History Museum who co-authored the study published in Science.
When first discovered, the skull was badly crushed and distorted after millennia underground. Using CT scanning, structured light imaging, and virtual reconstruction techniques, scientists restored its original shape, allowing for comparison with more than 100 other fossil specimens.
The reconstructed skull shows a mix of primitive and advanced features. While it has the long, low skull and strong browridge typical of earlier humans, it also has a larger estimated braincase and flatter face. These characteristics suggest it belongs to the Homo longi lineage (also called “Dragon Man”), which is closely linked to the Denisovans, a human population known mostly from DNA evidence.
The researchers’ analysis indicates that major human groups began diverging much earlier than previously thought. According to their findings, Neanderthals branched off around 1.38 million years ago, while Denisovans and modern humans last shared a common ancestor about 1.32 million years ago.
This timeline pushes back the emergence of Homo sapiens by approximately 400,000 years. Previously, scientists believed Homo sapiens, Denisovans, and Neanderthals diverged from a common ancestor between 700,000 and 500,000 years ago.
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The findings also suggest that East Asia played a crucial role in human evolution, challenging assumptions that all major evolutionary developments happened in Africa.
“Our research reveals that Yunxian 2 is not Homo erectus, but an early member of the longi clade and linked to the Denisovans,” Stringer explained. “Yunxian 2 may help us resolve what’s been called the ‘Muddle in the Middle,’ the confusing array of human fossils from between 1 million and 300,000 years ago.”
Not all experts are convinced the findings drastically change what we know. Susan C. Antón, professor of anthropology at New York University, noted: “I don’t think that our understanding of the age of brain size expansion changes much from this.” Bernard Wood, a professor of human origins, added that while a “largish brain this far back should not come as a surprise, that does not diminish the value of the evidence.”
Other scientists urge caution about the timeline conclusions. Aylwyn Scally, an evolutionary geneticist at Cambridge University, emphasized the difficulty in making precise timing estimates: “Even with the largest amount of genetic data, it is very difficult to place a time when these populations may have co-existed to within 100,000 years, or even more.”
If the findings hold up to further scrutiny, they suggest humans co-existed with other sister species for roughly 800,000 years – much longer than previously thought. They also hint that there could be fossils of Homo sapiens somewhere on Earth that are a million years old, waiting to be discovered.
