At what point in human history did we switch from Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree - swinger to earth - dwellers ? A fresh find write inNature Communicationscould aid to answer this question , and also provide further entropy on how we began to use stone tools .
human being and chimpanzees are believed to have shared acommon ancestorup to 13 million year ago , but the specifics regarding our separate phylogenesis remain a bit of a mystery . One key tool in work this out has been learn the hands of humans and chimps , to see how they have differed over time .
This latest discovery by a team from theInstitute of Evolution in Africa(IDEA ) , free-base in Madrid , break the earliest modern - human - corresponding hand os jazz of so far , dating back 1.84 million old age . It was found at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania . The pearl is thought to be from an unidentified modern - looking hominin ( human ancestor ) lineage , similar toHomo erectus , that originated in East Africa and live alongside other ancient hominins calledParanthropus boiseiandHomo habilis . But this hand is more exchangeable to mod humans than any other .
call Olduvai Hominin ( OH ) 86 , the fingerbreadth pearl ( phalanx ) suggests that human hands took their present form betimes in our evolution – but have barely convert since . It is cerebrate to be from the fiddling finger of a bridge player , and its importance is due to the ivory being straightforward . Older deal castanets have been discovered , but they are slue – and thus more suitable for living in tree . “ The discovery shows the species was 100 % attached to living on the solid ground , ” lead researcher Manuel Domínguez - Rodrigo from IDEA severalize IFLScience .
It is thought that human root started to expend tools around 2.6 million years ago ( although someresearchpushes that back to 3.3 million eld ) , so one would expect hands to have adapted by then . Finding evidence for this , though , has been difficult , making this discovery of great significance .
Its similarity to modern human script also supportsprevious researchthat our hands are relatively primitive . “ If we evaluate from this fossil , we can fundamentally say in almost two million years at least , the human finger has not evolved at all , ” aver Domínguez - Rodrigo .
develop straight handwriting off-white likely allowed our ancestors to use their fingers to more easily traction object , alongside the phylogeny of apposable and elongated thumbs .
To further solve the whodunit of how human hands develop , Domínguez - Rodrigo said the team needed to find more bones from the same bridge player , or another older than two million years , to empathise when the bones began to lose their curvature .
Image in textual matter : Researchers at the dig situation . M. Domínguez - Rodrigo .
