VIDEO: Discovery of Fossils Might Change Everything We Know About Human History

While some people still don’t think that the world is round and that we have evolved from monkeys, scientists keep going further with their research and proving more and more interesting theories.

Until now people have believed that we all originate from Africa, but some recent discoveries show that this might not be true and that we are actually from the Eastern Mediterranean region.

According to dailymail.co.uk, chimpanzees are humans’ nearest living relatives, but where the last chimp-human common ancestor lived has been debated for years by anthropologists.

Researchers in the Balkans have now discovered 7.2 million-year-old fossils, which they believe belonged to pre-humans. The findings suggest that the split of the human lineage occurred in the Eastern Mediterranean and not – as customarily assumed – in Africa.

Until now, researchers have assumed that the lineages between great apes and humans diverged five to seven million years ago and that the first pre-humans developed in Africa.

But two studies by an international team of researchers led by the University of Toronto outline a new scenario for the beginning of human history.

The team analyzed two known specimens of the fossil hominid Graecopithecus freybergi – a lower jaw from Pyrgos Vassilissis, Greece and an upper premolar from Azmaka, Bulgaria.

Using computer scanning, they were able to visualize the internal structures of the fossils and demonstrated that the roots of premolars are widely fused.

Professor Madelaine Böhme, who led the study, said: ‘While great apes typically have two or three separate and diverging roots, the roots of Graecopithecus converge and are partially fused – a feature that is characteristic of modern humans, early humans and several pre-humans including Ardipithecus and Australopithecus.’

The lower jaw, which the scientists have nicknamed ‘El Graeco’, has additional dental root features, suggesting that the Graecopithecus freybergi might belong to the pre-human lineage.

An analysis showed that the Graecopithecus fossils were 7.24 and 7.175 million years old – several hundred thousand years older than the oldest potential pre-human from Africa, the six to seven million-year-old Sahelanthropus from Chad.

Based on geological analyses of the sediments in which the two fossils were found, the researchers found that the North African Sahara desert originated more than seven million years ago.

Although geographically distant from the Sahara, an analysis of uranium, thorium, and lead isotopes in individual dust particles showed an age between 0.6 and three billion years and suggests an origin in Northern Africa.

The dusty sediment also had a high content of different salts. The researchers said: ‘These data document for the first time a spreading Sahara 7.2 million years ago, whose desert storms transported red, salty dust to the north coast of the Mediterranean Sea in its then form.’

Before the development of the Sahara in North Africa, the researchers believe that Europe was a vast savannah.

Professor Nikolai Spassov, who also worked on the study, said: ‘In summary, we reconstruct a Savannah, which fits with the giraffes, gazelles, antelopes, and rhinoceroses that were found together with Graecopithecus.’

Professor Böhme added: ‘The incipient formation of a desert in North Africa more than seven million years ago and the spread of savannahs in Southern Europe may have played a central role in the splitting of the human and chimpanzee lineages.’