Jebel Irhoud pushes Homo sapiens back 100,000 years
A cave in Morocco rewrites when our species began
Quick facts
- Date pushed back to
- About 300,000 years ago
- Site
- Jebel Irhoud cave, Morocco
- Published
- 8 June 2017, journal Nature, Jean-Jacques Hublin and colleagues
- Anatomy
- Ancient braincase and teeth, but a modern-looking face and jaw
What happened
Homo sapiens evolved in Africa during a period of dramatic climate change about 300,000 years ago, a date fixed by fossils from Jebel Irhoud cave in Morocco that are now considered the oldest known members of our species. Published in the journal Nature on 8 June 2017 by Jean-Jacques Hublin and colleagues, the find pushed back the origin of Homo sapiens by at least 100,000 years from what had previously been accepted. The fossils show large teeth and a long braincase similar to earlier species like Neanderthals, but a face, forehead, and jawbone much closer to a modern human's. The Smithsonian notes the finds suggest our species evolved across a wide area of Africa, with early populations interacting and evolving for hundreds of thousands of years before any dispersal beyond the continent. Anatomically, later Homo sapiens are marked by a lighter skeleton, a large brain averaging about 1,300 cubic centimetres, a thin-walled, high, rounded skull, and a flatter, more vertical face with smaller teeth and jaws than earlier humans.
Why it matters
This single discovery moved the starting line for our own species back by a hundred thousand years and changed the picture from one birthplace to a whole continent's worth of early populations. Every event on every human history timeline the site holds happens after this line, most of it in only the last sliver of it.
How we know
The Smithsonian's dedicated article on the Jebel Irhoud discovery gives the 300,000-year date, the site, the Nature publication date and lead author, the mix of ancient and modern skeletal features in the fossils, and the wider-Africa interpretation. The Smithsonian's Homo sapiens species page adds the anatomical description of the species and its climate-change context.
Sources
- Smithsonian Institution. Homo sapiens (Smithsonian Human Origins Program) (2024) · Reputable sourcehumanorigins.si.edu · The domain "humanorigins.si.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Smithsonian Institution. Our species arose at least 300,000 years ago (Smithsonian Human Origins Program, on the Jebel Irhoud discovery) (2017) · Reputable sourcehumanorigins.si.edu · The domain "humanorigins.si.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Hublin et al.. New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens (Nature, 2017, via PubMed) (2017) · Peer-reviewed (author-declared)pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov · Cited as a "journal" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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