Cradle of Man Traced to Asia
The Finding of a Skull in a Cavern in Palestine Leads Scientists to Believe That the Beginning of Modern Man May Have Been in Asia or in Northeastern Africa, Rather Than in Europe
Humans may have originated in “Asia” (the Middle East) “or northeastern Africa,” according to a 1925 New York Times Magazine article, instead of Europe as previously thought.
Today, the scientific consensus is that humans originated in east Africa, around Ethiopia.
Sir Arthur Keith, Royal College of Surgeons of England professor, wrote in that 1925 article about the recent discovery of a human skull in a cave called Mugharet el-Zuttiyeh (“Robbers’ Cave”) in Israel, then known as Palestine.
But first, he included this line referencing gender norms of the time, because why not:
More than a century ago, archaeologists discovered that every cave writes its own history and the history of its inhabitants in the deposits accumulating on its floor. The housewife of today knows how quickly dust gathers on her floors, tables, and cupboards; it gathers much more rapidly and thickly in caves… The cave housewife was not a tidy person; fortunately for us, she did no sweeping.
Ultimately, Keith concluded, the ancient skull discovery “suggested” that humans may have originated in the Middle East:
Why should this discovery have riveted the attention not only of archaeologists but of every intelligent mind in Europe? It was because the young cave explorer was able to produce irrefutable evidence that the skull had been lying where he found it at least 20,000 years before the Israelites entered their promised land.
…
Mr. Turville-Petre’s discovery throws some light. For the Galilean man, although truly of the Neanderthal species, does show on a number of features an approach to modern man. This suggests that the cradleland of men of our type lay either in the heart of Asia to the east of Palestine, or (there is some evidence to support such a thought) on the northeastern part of the African continent. Time will show.
Time did show.
Scientists today widely agree that humans originated in eastern Africa, specifically around Ethiopia. The oldest “anatomically modern” skeleton found from our species, Homo sapiens, dates to Ethiopia from 233,000 years ago. A 1987 analysis in Nature determined that modern humans’ earliest common genetic ancestor, a woman nicknamed “Mitochondrial Eve,” dates to Africa around 200,000 years ago.
In 2013, my dad published a piece for the Scientific American website about his trip to Africa, describing the phenomenon of traversing the same areas where the first humans originated: “My Ancestors Slept Here.”
Cradle of Man Traced to Asia: The Finding of a Skull in a Cavern in Palestine Leads Scientists to Believe That the Beginning of Modern Man May Have Been in Asia or in Northeastern Africa, Rather Than in Europe
Published: Sunday, October 25, 1925