Transcripts For DW Europe 20240712

Chimpanzees our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. But when did our ancestors and their start going their separate ways. And where did our human lineage 1st originate. Until now africa the home of todays chimpanzees has always been considered the cradle of humanity. A team of scientists have now called that theory into question it wouldnt be surprising to see animals in europe that may have been ancestral. German researcher madeleine but in a has tracked down a missing fossilized job own. Uncreative researchers discovered the fossilized footprints of a mysterious by pat. On the lower incomes presumably a Little Family group all these home ins and in germany a new extinct great ape came to light the end of the tube we believe this is a genuine transition to a missing legacy. Was europe not africa the actual cradle of humanity. Athens capital of greece and ancient birthplace of democracy. For years now the german paleontologist Madeleine Buena has been researching the Natural History of this region. What she discovered could radically change our understanding of Human Evolution. The saudi doesnt agree climate today is mediterranean hot dry summers and cool when winters for the 7000000 years ago things were very different the landscape covered today by athens used to be grass on a savanna softening us. And the animals that lived here at that time were differ. To greece was home to several species of elephant. There were also rhinos. Giraffes. And ostriches animals that today live in africa as the m. It was 4 or 5 degrees warmer than now and whether to a lost world just. At that time 7000000 years ago a mysterious creature lived in southeastern europe. Only a few traces of it remained. It may have been our very earliest ancestor. The search for traces of this creature brought madelaine burma to investigate a story that began in athens in 1944. The city had been occupied by the german families for 3 years the situation was tense and resistance by greek partisans against the occupiers was becoming fiercer by the day. The German Occupation forces included geologist bruno phone 5. It was his job to supervise the construction of new bunkers and artillery positions. On the grounds of a farm on the outskirts of athens his workers discovered something unusual in the rubble. Zeros he could have. Firmly embedded inside iraq was a piece of ancient bone. But. It was just one of many fossils that now come to light. Some more astonishingly well preserved. One of the private cloud. Bank knew enough about Family Intelligence to realize that this was an. Troy canary finds he told his workers to retrieve as many of the bones as they could be and to preserve them for science for he was a tough decision in 1949 fun fiber described the fossils in a scientific paper and listed an ape jump among the finds. Doesnt wolf inside the paper fit in the germans it was only 5 pages long as the fan was published in greece was led to not much attention was paid to it and people thought it was an ordinary a bottle effect. Only decades later in 1972 did researchers reexamine the jaw and realize that bruno phone 5 had discovered the remains of an extinct ape a grego pivot because for the scientists this was a crucial difference because apes are our closest animal relatives in our shared evolutionary history around 14000000 years ago the branch of the a ring a tans formed. Today they live in southeast asia. Then some 10000000 years ago the evolutionary line of the gorillas formed. They are only found in africa. 7 to 8000000 years ago the chimpanzees embarked on their own evolutionary path. They are our closest animal relatives. The human chimpanzee split marks the beginning of our own Evolutionary Development but where would the greco pittacus job own be placed on this timeline bruno phone fibered had not determined its age and the job own had meanwhile been misplaced. Then in 2009 at an excavation site in bulgaria researchers found a single tooth it too came from an extinct great ape scientists were able to date the premolar and realized it was a sensational find. The tooth was more than 7000000 years old and dated from the crucial phase when humans and chimpanzees parted company and our own evolution began. This isnt at that moment i suddenly remembered from try that and thought there might be a connection in terms of age and also know cation between the 2 thrown bowl garia and the john bones from greece does indeed that realisation was what really got me interested in the topic of Human Evolution shifting. Could our roots actually lie in europe if madelyn burmas interpretation proves correct are understanding of Human Evolution would be overturned only. Because chimpanzees are native to africa today and not only looks but behaves so much like us researchers suspected as early as the 19th century that humankind had originated in africa. This is something and has survived to the present day and has rarely been called into question. And Something Else has supported the assumption that africa is the cradle of humanity. Many important fossils of our early human ancestors have been discovered there since the 1920 s. The Scientific Consensus has long been that modern humans arose in ad. Erica. The idea that our roots might extend even further back and perhaps outside africa would shake up our understanding of Human Evolution. At the university of missouri in the u. S. The anatomist carol ward is working on reconstructing the evolutionary history of some of the most important fossil finds from africa. Among them is probably the most famous african fossil lucy a preview min of the species australopithecus afarensis. 40 percent of the skeleton has been preserved. Lucy is sort of the poster child for Human Evolution because she is so complete and when she was found in the 70s she was not only the most complete skeleton she at that time was earliest in our timeline of Human Evolution. Lucy was discovered in 1974 during an excavation by the american paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and the ethiopian a far region the research crew was listening to the beatles song lucy in the sky with diamonds at the camp that night and johansen thought the skeleton was likely female so they decided to name her lucy lucy lived 3000000 years ago so this is really about halfway through time since we branched off from a chimpanzee lineage from an ancestor that was like a champ was like a human that lived 6 or 8000000 years ago. Using forensic techniques researchers were able to reconstruct lucy and give her a face. And she was only one metre tall and weighed 29. 00 kilos. Unlike a great ape lucy was able to walk upright. But lucy. Lived long after the time when humans and chimpanzees diverged 7000000 years ago. And its difficult to place a lucy within the human family tree during that phase Human Evolution was already fairly advanced. And lucy lived at a pivotal time a time when many prehuman species lived in africa side by side. She may not have been ancestral to you and me she was a member of one of several species of australia paths whether which one of those was our ancestor if any we dont really know but theyre all similar in many ways and its certain that our ancestor was Something Like them and shared the features that most of them have in common. To understand the origins of modern humans we must go even further back in time to lucy to get even closer to the time when humans and chimpanzees went their separate evolutionary ways this is why another and much older fossil from africa has become an object of attention to my. To my or son helene therapist should insist was unearthed in chad in 2001. To mine was found in the sahara a great distance away from the east african sites where lucy was found over millions of years the to my skull had become distorted. As a result the fossilized skull had to be reconstructed virtually using a complex imaging process the goal was to determine whether to my was an extinct ape or an early human ancestor. To the analysis showed that to my head a mix of features his thick brow ridges resemble those of a male. Or chimpanzee but below his face was slightly flatter. For many scientists the most important anatomical detail was at the base of the skull. We know that one of the earliest features that sets us apart from our ape 4 barris is standing upright on 2 feet one thing we have is the hole where the spinal cord leaves the skull and in humans this is up tucked up underneath the skull like we see right here and saw how anthropos this is the hole its called frame and magnum which means big hall and its right here underneath the skull so i put it up here we can tell that there are temporal column would have been underneath the head. In a chimpanzee or a monkey or some other animal that frame in magnum would be back here because its quadrupedal. To my cannot be dated with absolute precision but is estimated to have lived between 6 and 7000000 years ago. To somehow land surface date from the very earliest stage of Human Evolution or could the fossils unearthed in europe be even older. It was an intriguing question but one that had no answer yet the tooth from bulgaria was an interesting find but not a definitive one and the job own discovered in athens in 1904 had not been dated with precision. The job 0 needed to be examined using modern methods but it could no longer be found. Madly in burma spend 2 years looking for it with no success. Finally someone suggested that she speak with one of bruno phone fiberglass former colleagues who had retired almost 20 years earlier. This was the breakthrough. Of of his own vibration when our collections was being hotly dismantled at the institute to make room for liberal. Trees professor phone freiburg said to me dr shiflet this is the most valuable piece in our collection and so someone to treat it with can even see it out of the circuit there so the secretary and put it in a safe at the Institute Just it wouldnt take a day aki. That was in the 1980 s. As to his when they said oh you mean the ape his thats in the safe back here in a safe at was an unbelievable moment. My mother and. Uncle joes if that then is safe was opened on all sims and out came a plastic food containers with a label on it. And a red marker for the word importance just draco pittacus for a bag. Of a coop to take was 5 back in on top of the seating had another lasting through containers and he says it was a which was actually a good way to store it. That was a bit bizarre he just said in that business insist. In 2014 the greco pittacus job own was brought to the university of tubingen where it was examined using modern methods. The fossil was fragile and had been damaged during the war its earlier researchers had only been able to examine its x. Journal and that to me. But now the scientists could examine the interior of the fossil without destroying it. Using computer tomography they visualize the internal structure of the job own. Family untie the all stop the sons from cricket we have a 3 d. Printout of the cricket that is to the shit we saw on the computer fast you can see very clearly that there are not surf used almost. Yes thats very typical of humans intell roots and always when you get a chimpanzee toothy it goes in the exact same tooth he lower jaw all premolar who have a wide gap you then have a ship that spears exactly the same 2 through time a human eye and we only see one root or and including a good catholic a c. The roots are in the process of fuse equal to see votes and off to vegas and their nationally. Or instead they also converge and come together here it was and this is characteristic of a human didnt get aforementioned. What might seem like a minor detail was for the scientists an indication that greco put the case might have been an early prehuman. But his greco pic is older than all the african prehuman fossils discovered to date. The former Nazi Party Rally Grounds in nuremberg 75 years after the end of the 2nd world war its now part of a museum and documentation center. This is where madeleine burma made the discovery that helped her date the job own. The other fossils that bruno phone fiber collected in athens in 1944 were being held in storage in the catacombs of the congress hall. They had been handed over to the nuremberg Natural History society which kept them here. For madelyne burma the discovery marked another turning point. Now at the top of the hunch that hes really did label these by hand we can see that on this one you know when you realize the importance of this collection was and i knew it had to exist but i have no idea. That there would be so many fossils of such high quality without this collection we wouldnt have been able to reconstruct the environment or date the jawbone as precisely so this is an absolute treasure that the job done on its own is that important to find but without the response was the context in time and space would have been assigned and all. A very unusual fossil offered the key to unlocking the age of the job wont help. Decide its at its height state age can be determined by examining the rock in the set of letters not to see if the problem with our fossils from america especially says in the greenies is that we had a drawer full of bones but no sediment and fortunately we had some giraffe on us and have a key to this your bone allowed us to do the data is on the board see heres a hole if we look inside we can see that its happening all of the reddish 71 to have and the other half is a cavity and a few see the sediment was liquid when it was loaded to the bone and settled on the top of this with the cavity and. Also this was up to set up and this was down stand that information helped us date thats also. The scientists determined the orientation of tiny magnetic particles inside the fossil those particles would have a wind themselves to the earths Magnetic Field at the time when the sediment was deposited in the bone and the sample became fossilized over millions of years the earths magnetic poles have reversed at irregular intervals Magnetic North became magnetic south and then flipped back again but the orientation of the particles remained fixed inside the sample. Scientists know when these poll reversals took place by comparing the magnetic fingerprint of the sample to this chronology scientists can arrive at a date for the sample this dating help the researchers determine that the giraffe bone and the job own are 7175000 years old. Madelaine burma had made a surprising discovery. Her research was published in 2017. And made headlines around the world. Believed that her discovery suggested the 1st hamann in line the oldest human ancestors could have emerged in europe and not in africa. The tooth and jawbone supported her hypothesis but offered no conclusive proof then another piece of evidence surfaced on crete. On the northwest coast of the island near track in los met with an International Research team and 2002 a polish paleontologist discovered some unusual fossilized footprints here some breaking they bore traces of bipedalism of an animal that walked upright on 2 legs a crucial feature distinguishing our early ancestors from great apes and they were around 6000000 years old older than almost all the fossils in africa to test the field. Is the outline of the whole print. You give us the bull. The big toe. On the smaller side toes. The whole thing. In the shape of the foot and the forward pointing toes are reminiscent of human footprints. It seems unlikely that they were made by an animal that stood only briefly on its hind legs which presumably would have left behind call marks and other revealing traces. Footprints as far as we can tell. Of footprints of home ins in other words early members of our own lineage and they all the earliest homing in footprints known anywhere in the world by a considerable margin maybe at least 3000000 years so. And i love them because they are a record of life think about i mean you know if you found like you know the skeleton of an early hominid that would of course because its the skeleton of a dead homing and what we have here is its like a sort of static film clip in stone of a family of live hominids not only see the case that the surfaces that you see reflected in the stone is the actual living flesh of the foot right. But you seeing behavior. A similar trail of footprints was discovered in lyon totally tanzania in 1978 the footprints were most likely left by an early species of human possibly even a relative of lucy. But the footprints are only 3600000 years old much younger than those of the mysterious footprints on crete. The animals that made these footprints lived at a much earlier evolutionary period as proven by the dating of the sandstone in which their tracks are preserved. The collection of footprints allowed the researchers to draw some additional conclusions. We could assure line here maybe maybe a little river delta were not quite sure but we very close to the waters edge and along comes presumably a Little Family group of these common inns looking for this and when the kind of like little hairy humans or little chimpanzees to somebody to talk to walk on the back legs the tallest ones might be about a metre 40 in height or so but the youngsters perhaps half that and what are they doing with this seem to be just wandering around the to guess theyre probably foraging for food at the waters edge the footprints on the surface so to meander around the snow very clear path and its not like theyre purposefully walking in some direction do they actually look like theyre having a nice day on the beach. The researchers now plan to date the sandstone with even greater precision. Basis. But the footprints might be older than 6000000 years. This date could offer further evidence for determining when bipedalism evolved. A trait that is only found in humans and their ancestors. Probably got enough thats why the question of bipedalism is key to differentiating between early chimpanzees and prehuman huston form and the only way to answer it 100 percent is from footprints that change coming and club alone does offer evidence of whether it might have come from a by pet. But the footprint is what offers the ultimate proof this device. But what might have sparked the evolution of early humans in europe. One answer might come from bulgaria where the greco pittacus premolar was discovered in 2009. The tooth was discovered on a dried up riverbed in the south of the country. That has a basis at that early prehuman hominids like rectal busy because if we were especially likely to remain close to River Systems that would have provided them with water to drink and different vegetation from what was found on the open savannah things that on its. Might there be even more presuming fossils located near the place where the tooth was found such a discovery would be like winning the lottery. From above the path followed by the prehistoric river is clearly visible the site was discovered by accident a company was mining sand there for highway construction. That all but a late equaliser spasso Office Director of the National Museum of Natural History in sofia often conducts excavations here. The bulgarian researcher and his team have discovered thousands of fossils of extinct animals here over the years its madelyn been a has been he. Several times to assisting with the excavation. This year has also brought interesting new discoveries including lead bones from an extinct species of giraffe. It was. A. Deliberate. Step the bones are encased in plaster to make them easier to excavate they wont be examined until they reach the laboratory. And. Every year we have many new bones for example very interesting is no the mandible of cruelty of this model car of the world it could be relatively small cat but we will see after and. This is a bar its all let the cat thats nice most of the. Great at t. V. For i know this top part of the t. V. We have here sort of. The socalled white the right here now the white try to exist in africa of course with another species but the beginning of these geniuses here in the southern old so on a scale of the balkans yet our secret. Is a new born. Out. Of hope in it yeah it could be our get a quick fix and i see in this moment yes of course in this moment it is understood this bone is extremely promising yes understanding the emotion. Thats of this moment because the original is very fragile the eagle eye spasov shows madelyne been a replica our theme is very proudly doll yes you can go. Im surprised greatuncle laugh congratulations thank you. If a bone comes from greco pittacus that could lend further support to the theory that the scale of the human lineage took place in europe. The other fossils found it as maka also show that like greece bulgaria once had a landscape similar to todays africa. In a nearby museum the researchers have been able to reconstruct entire skeletons from that period a dino theory im sure a prehistoric relative of modern day elephants with downward curving tusks. A hyena. And a saber toothed cat. But its just us but the fossils have allowed the scientists to draw conclusions about the animals that lived alongside greco pit that has. One exhibition recreates that world as it might once have looked. A savannah which once extended across vast regions of the Eastern Mediterranean filled with the ancestors of todays elephants is owls rhinos and zebras. And in the midst of them all too greco pickets. It was Charles Darwin founder of the theory of evolution who 1st suspected that the early prehumans evolved in a savanna that idea became known as the savannah hypothesis which postulated that as tropical forests disappeared prehumans adapted to the new habitat by walking on 2 legs. That meant that their hands were now free to make tools for example and walking upright also allowed these prehumans to see over tall savannah grass. Charles darwin was roundly my. Mocked for this theory by many contemporaries as this caricature illustrates. As it turns out the savanna hypothesis is incompatible with the belief that africa is the cradle of humanity 7000000 years ago africa was still largely covered in forests but the fossils found in bulgaria and greece lend new credence to the hypothesis jeff the causes of one since the african savannas appeared far later only 2 or 3000000 years ago that on this event as here are much much older around 7000000 years old and now we found a very early prehuman in these very old non african savannah is its exist doesnt overturn our entire evolutionary theory but it does shift it to a much earlier time france and to an entirely different continent that. The animal fossils are only one part of the picture madelaine been a believes that plant remains also support her theory. In the sediments surrounding the greek fossils madelyne been discovered tiny quartz like particles called finalists there formed by plants and can remain in the soil for millions of years. Because theyre so specialized researchers can determine what kinds of plant they originated from. The finalists suggest that southeastern europe was once largely grassland. Long before similar environmental changes began in africa the tropical forests of the Mediterranean Region were already in the climb. It was the result of Climate Change cooler temperatures and increasing aridity. The alpine foothills in the south of germany. In 2011 madelyne burma and her team began excavating a clay pit containing fossilized remains. Of animals that lived here 11600000 years ago. Large turtles and giant salamanders once swam in a river here. Prehistoric pigs and the ancestors of modern elephants roamed its banks even fossils of an early panda were discovered here. Just as a creative find. The team keep finding more fossils like this perfectly preserved vertebra of a forest antelope. When burma found it she quickly realized she had happened across something special. The clay even preserved a partial skeleton. When we find entire bones from a skeleton and were able to determine a lot about the animals musculoskeletal system us and their way of life yeah its far more than with skull fragments or teeth as far as a cyst comparatively long hole in the eyes and its almost as long as mine think of just the mind tells us that its arms were far longer than its my legs thats a typical feature of gray davis which climbed on trees and swung from branch to branch in ball and being hung and the foot baby the seen by the tibia and the contrast is quite short the shorter than the owner of the sheen by his late humans its the other way around our tibia is more anger than our own as a site and of this to be as here shows us that the ape walked with its knees stretched straight for schooling and the ankle here has the same structure as our human ones when its structure and alignment is intended for walking rather than climbing trees collecting often bone the ends of the. So we interpret this as a hybrid car and it could be a precursor to a walking upright like modern humans or a precursor to the tree dwellings a 4 legged existence of apes and feel food that leaves fire as if a mention of a genuine transition missing langberg on skeet and missing link ringback. The researchers named the new wave done movie is good mostly but its also known as odo. Thats because the day on which the 1st fossil was discovered was the 70th birthday of popular german musician bag who songs were being played on the radio that day. A parallel to the famous lucy from africa who was named after a beatle song. To them and kept saw them as a huge win an excavation your happy about everything you signed on to do but if we had a complete skull from the newbie is going on with it we know a great deal more about his brain size for example we might know more about his direct evolutionary relationship to chimpanzees and humans a few if we had a complete for life we might know more about whether he walked upright and how far he could watch. This movie holmes what we already have the basis for what could provide us with real answers. To. The team have already unearth 15 percent of bhuttos skeleton including bones from many different parts of his anatomy so bad as allow them to gain a more accurate picture of this new species. To better understand those proportions the fossils have been laid out and missing segments have been replaced by replica. The replicas are made on a 3 d. Printer. A right to for example has been printed as a mirror copy of the left one. Forehead among us back in the days we used to use putty or clay to make models like this but now we can get a one to one image by mirroring the see if that makes a reconstruction much easier and even though its just a copy it gives us a much clearer picture of this real human face and. Thats. Always unique nothing quite like him has been found in africa along with the other extinct great apes from europe otoh lends further support for the theory that the earliest chapter in Human Evolution began in europe even who those size and weight are suggestive of later species of prehumans. This reconstruction shows hutto the nuvi is goog mosi standing upright on 2 legs he appears to be a common ancestor of both modern humans and chimpanzees and he was found in europe. Why havent similar discoveries been made in africa madlang boom a came across a possible explanation. An examination of the sediment from the lower jaw of the greco pittacus under an electron microscope revealed traces of a major environmental change that took place in Northern Africa during that period. At 10000 times magnification the tiny dust particles making up most of the sediment reveal a kind of geological fingerprint. To. This shape of particle and the patterns on its surface are created when dust is blown by the. The wind and the grains of dust collide against each other over and over. Things the chemical composition of dust is also known and reveals that it came from the Libyan Desert the sahara. To stop many in the on the river huge amounts of dust at the time to see this our models show that up to a quarter kilo of dust was deposited per square meter per year thats a huge amount odd to keep just places like that still do exist but theyre rather inhospitable that lie size of midst of the mounting today we see that amount of dust in the sun hell zone as a hottie in one of the vast amounts of dust come from the Sahara Desert in fact then southern greece has the same amount of dust suit islam does not. These findings allow the researchers to put a date to the earliest known sahara phase it would have been at least as early as greco pittacus 7200000 years ago several 1000000 years earlier than previously assumed. That could explain why nothing comparable has been found in africa the desert would have formed a barrier between europe and africa which our earliest ancestors would have been unable to cross. This early desert phase was followed by a period where the humid climate during which the sahara was covered with vegetation. During this phase which coincides with the emergence of the oldest african fossil remains early human ancestors coming from europe might have been able to make their way to africa across the middle east. And perhaps these early humans were slowly spread to africa where they continued to evolve in the way suggested by archaeological finds from africa. The ancestors of the chimpanzees and gorillas could also have followed this route from europe to africa. Maybe they followed the receding forests all the way to the equitorial region of africa where they could continue to live in their preferred habitat. One species may have followed a different path greco pittacus could have remained in europe adapted to the savanna environment and established a new evolutionary lineage leading to modern humans. Perhaps one day soon paleontologists will unearth new fossils in the Mediterranean Region that will lend further support to this theory. Madeleine boom of plans to follow these vestiges wherever they take her. For her these findings are just the beginning the flushing toilets this recent research has brought some surprising discoveries which shed an entirely different light on europes role in the evolution of modern humans than fish knows least its fantastic to be part of the us to tight spot in style it is im really excited about what were going to find next on. Whatever this research might bring it seems that evolution paid little heed to the geographical boundaries we take for granted today. Over millions of years driven by environmental change modern humans evolved across a vast region perhaps 1st in europe and later in africa. Populating new habitats and eventually spanning continents. Again. To. Get gang. Up on the once a deafening lock up the summer Music Festivals. This year theyre modestly quiet. Or even silent. Is their music playing anywhere and. The summer Music Festivals during the coronavirus tended. Bar to 21. And 30 minutes on d w. D beethoven incident just something you did to do didnt need to do. Did is it doesnt judge a 16 bit of light heat treating the overarching model. Many rubber bands of stolen beethoven. And of course the subconscious always one thing is clear the band mate is a wildly popular. I see a sure. But how little more sound the biggest composer of all time i cant even begin to imagine a world class one player centralist on a musical journey of discovery. Along with the whole. Star september 16th on the w. Force against president alexander. Thousands of. On the streets of minutes. After an election. In the capital