Apidima 1 skull (possible 210 ka Homo sapiens)
Cráneo de Apidima 1 (posible Homo sapiens de c. 210 ka)
- Date
- c. 210 ka · confidence low
- Place
- Apidima Cave, Mani, Laconia, Greece
- Credited to
- Middle Pleistocene human populations
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
A cranial fragment found in 1978 that a 2019 study interpreted as Homo sapiens at least 210 ka old, the oldest modern-human fossil outside Africa. A second skull from the same cave, c. 170 ka, is Neanderthal.
Harvati et al. (Nature, 2019). The sapiens attribution rests on a very incomplete fragment and the indirect uranium-thorium dating of the breccia; other authors consider it an archaic, non-sapiens human.
What it led to
- rethinking of early dispersals out of Africa
- debate on sapiens and Neanderthal coexistence in the Mediterranean