Humanity is Ancient

Everything I was taught in school is wrong, well almost everything. Science is an ever expanding universe filled with fascinating things to uncover and the most fascinating things for me personally are the discoveries we make about our ancient ancestors.

I was taught in school, many years ago, that humanity started evolving AFTER the last ice age. Well I always had my doubts about that but now we have actual scientific evidence that this is definitely NOT the case.

Humans lived BEFORE and DURING the last ice age. If that survivalist horrific drama wasn’t impressive enough, we now know that these humans were definitely NOT barbaric cave men who had no tools, no language and whatever else they used to teach us… the truth is, humanity was most likely very advanced before the last ice age, and the dramatic changes in climate may have shattered humanities collective knowledge and way of life but our race is resilient.

Some of our ancestors survived, and evidence suggests we had some animal life around during this period of difficulty which undoubtedly helped our species survive the chaos our ancestors endured. There might be a ring of truth to the story of Noah’s ark… symbolically perhaps.

I make these claims based on evidence recovered over the last decade or so, such as the excavation of Göbekli Tepe, a Neolithic archaeological site near the city of Şanlıurfa in Southeastern Anatolia, Turkey.

Discovered and excavated by Klaus Schmidt. This site is categorized into two distinct ‘phases’. Its oldest layer dates to around 9000 BCE, the end of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A age. The younger phase of the site, radiocarbon dated to between 8300 and 7400 BCE, belongs to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B age. During the early phase, circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected, classified as the world's oldest currently known megaliths. Which totally contradicts everything we thought we knew about human civilisations and our ancestral history.

Side note, we will definitely have to rename the “pre-pottery neolithic ages” because one of the most recent archeological finds has uncovered a ‘mud cup’ which is definitely a type of ancient ‘pottery’, which has been found to contain DNA traces from an adult female human, as well as wolf and bison DNA. That cup ladies and gentlemen, is dated to be approximately 25,000 years old.

Yes, you read that right, TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND. This completely obliterates everything we thought we knew about human evolution. If that discovery wasn’t impressive enough, the methodology used to unveil these facts is in itself astounding… Let me be clear, there were no bones found at the site. That’s right, we now have the ability to use bits and pieces of DNA found in sediment to put together a genome sequence. Fascinating!

A team of scientists led by evolutionary biologist Pere Gelabert and archaeologist Ron Pinhasi of the University of Vienna in Austria went looking for environmental DNA in Satsurblia cave. They obtained six soil samples, carefully sifted through them, looking for traces of genetic material.

They found them in the form of mitochondrial DNA. Fragmentary and incomplete, but, once painstakingly pieced together, sufficient enough to yield amazing new information about the hominid populations that once inhabited the region.

First, there was the woman. Only a tiny fraction of her genome was recovered, but from that, the researchers were able to infer that she was a member of a previously unknown group of modern humans. That group is now extinct, but it contributed to present day populations in Europe and Asia, as discovered when the ancient genome was compared to current human genomes.

That’s right, that woman was a hominid, which we previously had no idea had ever existed, and she was a direct ancestor to modern humans originating from Eurasia. It boggles the mind to even imagine what her life might have been like… but a few things are for sure, she had a cup made of mud and lived with bison and wolves.

Another interesting piece of evidence to support my claims is a documentary called “The Nobles of Pre-History” which explores how archaeologist Émile Rivière's 1872 discovery of a human skeleton at the Balzi Rossi cliffs on the French-Italian border (the first time a Palaeolithic skeleton was found complete with its grave goods and associated ornaments) has since led to a deeper understanding of prehistory.

The documentary follows recent research on the skeleton and associated sites that has allowed researchers to conceive of a nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples who were much more complex than previously imagined; with hierarchical societies, religious beliefs and highly developed material culture COMPLETELY undermining the idea of 'prehistoric savagery'.

If what you’ve read so far is interesting to you, I highly recommend you watch the documentary which is available in its entirety on YouTube - https://youtube.com/watch?v=mWyADowoEvw

Sources :

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-human-genome-has-been-recovered-from-cave-dirt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe