In June 2017, however, all of this changed. A multiyear excavation led by Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, revealed that H. sapiens was present at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, more than 5,000 km (3,100 miles) away from East Africa (the region many paleontologists call “the cradle of humankind”). The team unearthed a collection of specimens that was made up of skull fragments and a complete jawbone (both of which were strikingly similar to those of modern human beings) as well as stone tools—all of which dated to about 315,000 years ago, more than 100,000 years earlier than the remains found at Omo. Although this discovery has not yet convinced all paleontologists, it suggests that the species could have been widely dispersed throughout North Africa much earlier than they expected and that East Africa might not have been the only cradle. https://www.britannica.com/story/just-how-old-is-homo-sapiens
