When Did Homo Sapiens First Appear?

Determining when the first modern human emerged on the scene is tricky.

By Nathaniel Scharping
May 15, 2020 3:00 PM
Jebel Irhoud 1. Homo Sapiens
A composite reconstruction of one of the earliest known Homo sapiens fossils from a site in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, based on micro-computed tomographic scans of multiple original fossils. (Credit: Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig/CC-BY-SA 2.0)

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The oldest Homo sapiens fossils that anthropologists have found thus far date to around 315,000 years ago. That means we can say that modern humans are at least that old. But our lineage likely extends further back in time — we just don’t have the fossils to prove it.

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