The clock is "reset" on these types of things so frequently that I can help wondering why we speak so confidently about the origins of our species, and how long we've been here, and ultimately where we came from on this earth.
Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade is a great book reviewing the recent science on our species from about 100k year ago to about 10k years ago. It provides the overview and context that you dont get from a NYT article such as this.
Do we know better? Probably. Are we correct in our understanding of the natural world? Hell no.
"All models are wrong; some models are very useful", as the adage goes. Science isn't so much about being right as it is about being less wrong.
I'm fine with resetting the narrative as we learn vs making bad assumptions.
1. We find human remains we can date back 100,000 years. Press release that we know humans are at least 100,000 years old.
2. We find human remains we can date back 150,000 years. Press release that we know humans are at least 150,000 years old. We were wrong about #1 (sort of).
3. We find human remains we can date back 200,000 years. Press release that we know humans are at least 200,000 years old. We were wrong about #1 & #2 (sort of).
This particular skull is apparently slightly elongated compared to than of modern humans, so that is spawning some debate, which is good. I don't know if some would consider this a parent species because of this, but probably.
An interesting paragraph I read in one of these articles on this recent discovery is that fossils this old are difficult to find because it requires an dry, arid area to survive. Assuming that humanity started in Africa will probably never be disproven because we would need to find a fossil older than 300,000 years that's not in Africa. I assume we think this based on the only evidence we have: we've only found the oldest fossils in Africa.
Naive question, how do we draw the line between new species and variance of actual homo sapiens? I can imagine some interesting "specimens" of underlying skulls in some people I've encountered that could even fall in another extinct homo species from the images I've seen (sounds funny but it's real question).
Saying 'modern humans' or 'homo sapiens' are X years old is a misleading statement. Evolution isn't some binary where all of a sudden you have modern humans. It's genetic change over time.
Better reporting would be to compare this find with relatively modern features in Morocco at 300,00 years ago, to Homo Naledi with archaic features in South Africa at 335,000 to 236,000 years ago. As other users put it, compare this data point to other data points.
This find implies that relatively modern humans had spread to multiple parts of Africa by 300,000 ya, while at the same time evolutionary cousins like H. naledi persisted in other parts.
"And if that is true, Dr. Gunz and his colleagues argue, then our species may have been evolving as a network of groups spread across the continent." This IMO is the best sentence summarizing the impact of this find, and makes the most sense evolutionarily. Instead of having one group evolve all modern traits, and then 70,000 years ago explode across Africa and then the globe, you have several groups with limited interbreeding evolving 'modern' traits. The interbreeding allows the traits to cross into other groups, and modern humans are the result of a particularly successful combination of traits where some traits arose in one group or location and some in others.
So sure, in evolutionary deep time (1-2 million years) East Africa remains the cradle of humanity. But this find updates the story that by 300,000 years ago, the groups that became human had left the cradle. That's a big story, and is a much better summation than the misleading "Humans are X years old, older than Y that we previously thought".
I will always hope that we find some clue which suggests humans came from somewhere other than Earth. That would probably be the second best thing, after proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, to spur deep-space exploration.
I'd love some good science fiction based on that idea at least. Mars seems like a plausible candidate; We ruined it/were forced to leave, fled to Earth, culled the dinosaurs, and made here home.
Plus, I think an extraterrestrial source for human life just makes me think of all sorts of geeky fantasies.
It really isn't; this doesn't change anything, we previously knew we were at least 200k years old, that fact is still true. We now know we're at least 300k years old, that fact will also always remain true. What's at fault is your understanding of what science is saying rather than what it's actually saying.
> that I can help wondering why we speak so confidently about the origins of our species
Because it's a given that we're always speaking about current best available knowledge. What is proven true remains true, it's just refined over time as new truths are discovered. What we know continually grows, it's not like we're changing what we know to be something else, we're just growing what we know continually.
And I think you're confusing me with the OP, I didn't ask any question at all, nor do I think the OP's question is legitimate. The OP is assuming incorrectly that current science states definitively when homo sapiens began, but it doesn't, it merely says here's the oldest evidence we currently have so we're at least this old; science never said we're not older. As we cannot time travel, we can never definitively say when homo sapiens began, it will always be an estimate based on the oldest fossils found and as such that estimate can be changed anytime new fossils are found that pre-date the existing oldest fossil.
And don't get me started on some of the NPCs...