Jean-Jacques Hublin

The findings of excavations at the Bacho Kiro cave near Dryanovo in central Bulgaria suggest that the chronological overlap between humans and Neanderthals was longer than previously thought, said an article published in the science journal Nature on Monday.

The understanding of human origins was turned on its head on June 7 with the announcement of the discovery of fossils unearthed on a Moroccan hillside that are about 100,000 years older than any other known remains of our species, Homo sapiens.

Anthropologists have long sought to pin down the exact location of the proverbial “Garden of Eden” — the region of our planet where the earliest Homo sapiensemerged.
Over the last two decades, a combination of genetic evidence and data from the fossil record led scientists to conclude that the first members of our species evolved in Eastern Africa about 200,000 years ago.