Scientists are still learning about the origins of our species, Homo sapiens, which is thought to have arisen during what was called the Middle Pleistocene and is now known as the Chibanian period, about 774,000-129,000 years ago. To help clarify this discussion, researchers have proposed that the field stop using some terms and adopt a new one.Reporting inEvolutionary Anthropology News and Reviews, an international team has suggested that a species they call a direct ancestor of humans should be named Homo bodoensis, and the names Homo heidelbergensis and Homo rhodesiensis should be abandoned.
Homo bodoensis lived about half a million years ago, and lived in Africa; the "bodoensis” name comes from a skull that was found in Bodo D’ar, Ethiopia. The study also suggested that Western European fossils given the H. heidelbergensis designation should be reassigned as Homo neanderthalensis.
H. bodoensis分类可以帮助研究人员使用通用语言来更好地了解人类进化。这项研究指出，最近发现的一些化石已经被放入了同类属中，尽管它们与我们的进化几乎没有关系，例如Homo Floresiensis，他们大约同时存在。Heidelbergensis H. Heidelbergensis的名称是基于对下颌骨的分析而创建的，甚至在现代技术（如DNA分析）之前被使用。
Relatives of modern humans, like Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) are also thought to have arisen during the Middle Pleistocene. DNA from human relatives that dates back over 400,000 years has been sequenced, but there is very little genetic information about Homo sapiens from 40,000 to 47,000 years ago, and none from before then. The genetic composition of humans that first colonized Europe is not well understood, and as of now, the oldest known DNAfrom a modern human is about 45,000 years old.
Everyone with an ancestry from somewhere other than Africa has a genome that is around two to three percent Neanderthal DNA, which has suggested that humans left Africa about 60,000 years ago and interbred with Neanderthals in the Near East about 50,000 years ago or more.
H. bodoensis can now be used to describe humans that lived in the distant past during that Chibanian or Middle Pleistocene period who were from Africa or Southeast Europe, and were our ancestors. This name can be a part of a reclassification of fossils from this time period that have been assigned in sometimes contradictory ways. Fossils from these regions and this time period have typically been called Homo heidelbergensis or Homo rhodesiensis.
But DNA evidence has revealed that some European H. heidelbergensis fossils were actually Neanderthals. Study co-author Xiu-Jie Wu of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, suggested that this terminology should also be abandoned when describing fossils from east Asia. Additionally, some African fossils from the Middle Pleistocene have been called H. heidelbergensis or H. rhodesiensis, the latter being a term that was not commonly accepted and is rife with colonial connotations.
“Talking about human evolution during this time period became impossible due to the lack of proper terminology that acknowledges human geographic variation," said study leader Dr. Mirjana Roksandic, a University of Winnipeg palaeoanthropologist. This work can help solve that problem.
Sources:Nature,The University of Winnipeg,Evolutionary Anthropology Issues News and Reviews
