Chimpanzees our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. But when did our ancestors and their start going their separate ways. And where did our human lineage 1st originate. Until now africa the home of todays chimpanzees has always been considered the cradle of humanity. A team of scientists have now called that theory into question it wouldnt be surprising to see animals in europe that may have been ancestral. German researcher madeleine but in a has tracked down a missing fossilized job own. Uncreative researchers discovered the fossilized footprints of a mysterious by pat. On the lower incomes presumably a Little Family group all these home ins and in germany a new extinct great ape came to light the end of the tube we believe this is a genuine transition to a missing legacy. Was europe not africa the actual cradle of humanity. Athens capital of greece and ancient birthplace of democracy. For years now the german paleontologist Madeleine Buena has been researching the Natural History of this region. What she discovered could radically change our understanding of Human Evolution. The saudi doesnt agree climate today is mediterranean hot dry summers and cool when winters for the 7000000 years ago things were very different the landscape covered today by athens used to be grass on a savanna softening us. And the animals that lived here at that time were differ. To greece was home to several species of elephant. There were also rhinos. Giraffes. And ostriches animals that today live in africa as the m. It was 4 or 5 degrees warmer than now and whether to a lost world just. At that time 7000000 years ago a mysterious creature lived in southeastern europe. Only a few traces of it remained. It may have been our very earliest ancestor. The search for traces of this creature brought madelaine burma to investigate a story that began in athens in 1944. The city had been occupied by the german families for 3 years the situation was tense and resistance by greek partisans against the occupiers was becoming fiercer by the day. The German Occupation forces included geologist bruno phone 5. It was his job to supervise the construction of new bunkers and artillery positions. On the grounds of a farm on the outskirts of athens his workers discovered something unusual in the rubble. Zeros he could have. Firmly embedded inside iraq was a piece of ancient bone. But. It was just one of many fossils that now come to light. Some more astonishingly well preserved. One of the private cloud. Bank knew enough about Family Intelligence to realize that this was an. Troy canary finds he told his workers to retrieve as many of the bones as they could be and to preserve them for science for he was a tough decision in 1949 fun fiber described the fossils in a scientific paper and listed an ape jump among the finds. Doesnt wolf inside the paper fit in the germans it was only 5 pages long as the fan was published in greece was led to not much attention was paid to it and people thought it was an ordinary a bottle effect. Only decades later in 1972 did researchers reexamine the jaw and realize that bruno phone 5 had discovered the remains of an extinct ape a grego pivot because for the scientists this was a crucial difference because apes are our closest animal relatives in our shared evolutionary history around 14000000 years ago the branch of the a ring a tans formed. Today they live in southeast asia. Then some 10000000 years ago the evolutionary line of the gorillas formed. They are only found in africa. 7 to 8000000 years ago the chimpanzees embarked on their own evolutionary path. They are our closest animal relatives. The human chimpanzee split marks the beginning of our own Evolutionary Development but where would the greco pittacus job own be placed on this timeline bruno phone fibered had not determined its age and the job own had meanwhile been misplaced. Then in 2009 at an excavation site in bulgaria researchers found a single tooth it too came from an extinct great ape scientists were able to date the premolar and realized it was a sensational find. The tooth was more than 7000000 years old and dated from the crucial phase when humans and chimpanzees parted company and our own evolution began. This isnt at that moment i suddenly remembered from try that and thought there might be a connection in terms of age and also know cation between the 2 thrown bowl garia and the john bones from greece does indeed that realisation was what really got me interested in the topic of Human Evolution shifting. Could our roots actually lie in europe if madelyn burmas interpretation proves correct are understanding of Human Evolution would be overturned only. Because chimpanzees are native to africa today and not only looks but behaves so much like us researchers suspected as early as the 19th century that humankind had originated in africa. This is something and has survived to the present day and has rarely been called into question. And Something Else has supported the assumption that africa is the cradle of humanity. Many important fossils of our early human ancestors have been discovered there since the 1920 s. The Scientific Consensus has long been that modern humans arose in ad. Erica. The idea that our roots might extend even further back and perhaps outside africa would shake up our understanding of Human Evolution. At the university of missouri in the u. S. The anatomist carol ward is working on reconstructing the evolutionary history of some of the most important fossil finds from africa. Among them is probably the most famous african fossil lucy a preview min of the species australopithecus afarensis. 40 percent of the skeleton has been preserved. Lucy is sort of the poster child for Human Evolution because she is so complete and when she was found in the 70s she was not only the most complete skeleton she at that time was earliest in our timeline of Human Evolution. Lucy was discovered in 1974 during an excavation by the american paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and the ethiopian a far region the research crew was listening to the beatles song lucy in the sky with diamonds at the camp that night and johansen thought the skeleton was likely female so they decided to name her lucy lucy lived 3000000 years ago so this is really about halfway through time since we branched off from a chimpanzee lineage from an ancestor that was like a champ was like a human that lived 6 or 8000000 years ago. Using forensic techniques researchers were able to reconstruct lucy and give her a face. And she was only one metre tall and weighed 29. 00 kilos. Unlike a great ape lucy was able to walk upright. But lucy. Lived long after the time when humans and chimpanzees diverged 7000000 years ago. And its difficult to place a lucy within the human family tree during that phase Human Evolution was already fairly advanced. And lucy lived at a pivotal time a time when many prehuman species lived in africa side by side. She may not have been ancestral to you and me she was a member of one of several species of australia paths whether which one of those was our ancestor if any we dont really know but theyre all similar in many ways and its certain that our ancestor was Something Like them and shared the features that most of them have in common. To understand the origins of modern humans we must go even further back in time to lucy to get even closer to the time when humans and chimpanzees went their separate evolutionary ways this is why another and much older fossil from africa has become an object of attention to my. To my or son helene therapist should insist was unearthed in chad in 2001. To mine was found in the sahara a great distance away from the east african sites where lucy was found over millions of years the to my skull had become distorted. As a result the fossilized skull had to be reconstructed virtually using a complex imaging process the goal was to determine whether to my was an extinct ape or an early human ancestor. To the analysis showed that to my head a mix of features his thick brow ridges resemble those of a male. Or chimpanzee but below his face was slightly flatter. For many scientists the most important anatomical detail was at the base of the skull. We know that one of the earliest features that sets us apart from our ape 4 barris is standing upright on 2 feet one thing we have is the hole where the spinal cord leaves the skull and in humans this is up tucked up underneath the skull like we see right here and saw how anthropos this is the hole its called frame and magnum which means big hall and its right here underneath the skull so i put it up here we can tell that there are temporal column would have been underneath the head. In a chimpanzee or a monkey or some other animal that frame in magnum would be back here because its quadrupedal. To my cannot be dated with absolute precision but is estimated to have lived between 6 and 7000000 years ago. To somehow land surface date from the very earliest stage of Human Evolution or could the fossils unearthed in europe be even older. It was an intriguing question but one that had no answer yet the tooth from bulgaria was an interesting find but not a definitive one and the job own discovered in athens in 1904 had not been dated with precision. The job 0 needed to be examined using modern methods but it could no longer be found. Madly in burma spend 2 years looking for it with no success. Finally someone suggested that she speak with one of bruno phone fiberglass former colleagues who had retired almost 20 years earlier. This was the breakthrough. Of of his own vibration when our collections was being hotly dismantled at the institute to make room for liberal. Trees professor phone freiburg said to me dr shiflet this is the most valuable piece in our collection and so someone to treat it with can even see it out of the circuit there so the secretary and put it in a safe at the Institute Just it wouldnt take a day aki. That was in the 1980 s. As to his when they said oh you mean the ape his thats in the safe back here in a safe at was an unbelievable moment. My mother and. Uncle joes if that then is safe was opened on all sims and out came a plastic food containers with a label on it. And a red marker for the word importance just draco pittacus for a bag. Of a coop to take was 5 back in on top of the seating had another lasting through containers and he says it was a which was actually a good way to store it. That was a bit bizarre he just said in that business insist. In 2014 the greco pittacus job own was brought to the university of tubingen where it was examined using modern methods. The fossil was fragile and had been damaged during the war its earlier researchers had only been able to examine its x. Journal and that to me. But now the scientists could examine the interior of the fossil without destroying it. Using computer tomography they visualize the internal structure of the job own. Family untie the all stop the sons from cricket we have a 3 d. Printout of the cricket that is to the shit we saw on the computer fast you can see very clearly that there are not surf used almost. Yes thats very typical of humans intell roots and always when you get a chimpanzee toothy it goes in the exact same tooth he lower jaw all premolar who have a wide gap you then have a ship that spears exactly the same 2 through time a human eye and we only see one root or and including a good catholic a c. The roots are in the process of fuse equal to see votes and off to vegas and their nationally. Or instead they also converge and come together here it was and this is characteristic of a human didnt get aforementioned. What might seem like a minor detail was for the scientists an indication that greco put the case might have been an early prehuman. But his greco pic is older than all the african prehuman fossils discovered to date. The former Nazi Party Rally Grounds in nuremberg 75 years after the end of the 2nd world war its now part of a museum and documentation center. This is where madeleine burma made the discovery that helped her date the job own. The other fossils that bruno phone fiber collected in athens in 1944 were being held in storage in the catacombs of the congress hall. They had been handed over to the nuremberg Natural History society which kept them here. For madelyne burma the discovery marked another turning point. Now at the top of the hunch that hes really did label these by hand we can see that on this one you know when you realize the importance of this collection was and i knew it had to exist but i have no idea. That there would be so many fossils of such high quality without this collection we wouldnt have been able to reconstruct the environment or date the jawbone as precisely so this is an absolute treasure that the job done on its own is that important to find but without the response was the context in time and space would have been assigned and all. A very unusual fossil offered the key to unlocking the age of the job wont help. Decide its at its height state age can be determined by examining the rock in the set of letters not to see if the problem with our fossils from america especially says in the greenies is that we had a drawer full of bones but no sediment and fortunately we had some giraffe on us and have a key to this your bone allowed us to do the data is on the board see heres a hole if we look inside we can see that its happening all of the reddish 71 to have and the other half is a cavity and a few see the sediment was liquid when it was loaded to the bone and settled on the top of this with the cavity and. Also this was up to set up and this was down stand that information helped us date thats also. The scientists determined the orientation of tiny magnetic particles inside the fossil those particles would have a wind themselves to the earths Magnetic Field at the time when the sediment was deposited in the bone and the sample became fossilized over millions of years the earths magnetic poles have reversed at irregular intervals Magnetic North became magnetic south and then flipped back again but the orientation of the particles remained fixed inside the sample. Scientists know when these poll reversals took place by comparing the magnetic fingerprint of the sample to this chronology scientists can arrive at a date for the sample this dating help the researchers determine that the giraffe bone and the job own are 7175000 years old. Madelaine burma had made a surprising discovery. Her research was published in 2017. And made headlines around the world. Believed that her discovery suggested the 1st hamann in line the oldest human ancestors could have emerged in europe and not in africa. The tooth and jawbone supported her hypothesis but offered no conclusive proof then another piece of evidence surfaced on crete. On the northwest coast of the island near track in los met with an International Research team and 2002 a polish paleontologist discovered some unusual fossilized footprints here some breaking they bore traces of bipedalism of an animal that walked upright on 2 legs a crucial feature distinguishing our early ancestors from great apes and they were around 6000000 years old older than almost all the fossils in africa to test the field. Is the outline of the whole print. You give us the bull. The big toe. On the smaller side toes. The whole thing. In the shape of the foot and the forward pointing toes are reminiscent of human footprints. It seems unlikely that they were made by an animal that stood only briefly on its hind legs which presumably would have left behind call marks and other revealing traces. Footprints as far as we can tell. Of footprints of home ins in other words early members of our own lineage and they all the earliest homing in footprints known anywhere in the world by a considerable margin maybe at least 3000000 years so. And i love them because they are a record of life think about i mean you know if you found like you know the skeleton of an early hominid that would of course because its the skeleton of a dead homing and what we have here is its like a sort of static film clip in stone of a family of live hominids not only see the case that the surfaces that you see reflected in the stone is the actual living flesh of the foot right. But you seeing behavior. A similar trail of footprints was discovered in lyon totally tanzania in 1978 the footprints were most likely left by an early species of human possibly even a relative of lucy. But the footprints are only 3600000 years old much younger than those of the mysterious footprints on crete. The animals that made these footprints lived at a much earlier evolutionary period as proven by the dating of the sandstone in which their tracks are preserved. The collection of footprints allowed the researchers to draw some additional conclusions. We could assure line here maybe maybe a little river delta were not quite sure but we very close to the waters edge and along comes presumably a Little Family group of these common inns looking for this and when the kind of like little hairy humans or little chimpanzees to somebody to talk to walk on the back legs the tallest ones might be about a metre 40 in height or so but the youngsters perhaps half that and what are they doing with this seem to be just wandering around the to guess theyre probably foraging for food at the waters edge the footprints on the surface so to meander around the snow very clear path and its not like theyre purposefully walking in some direction do they actually look like theyre having a nice day on the beach. The researchers now plan to date the sandstone with even greater precision. Basis. But the footprints might be older than 6000000 years. This date could offer further evidence for determining when bipedalism evolved. A trait that is only found in humans and their ancestors. Probably got enough thats why the question of bipedalism is key to differentiating between early chimpanzees and prehuman huston form and the only way to answer it 100 percent is from footprints that change coming and club alone does offer evidence of whether it might have come from a by pet. But the footprint is what offers the ultimate proof this device. But what might have sparked the evolution of early humans in europe. One answer might come from bulgaria where the greco pittacus premolar was discovered in 2009. The tooth wa