An interview with Prof. Michel Bruna, who located the earliest human
Lior Kodner
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The controversy surrounding the development of the human race has been going on for thousands of years, as part of the growth of religious belief in the world. The debate that divided scientists and religious people in the past, has expanded in recent years to the scientific community as well. The reason is that scientists find it difficult to chart a clear course of development of the human race. The two main questions that are still disputed are when did man split from the ape; And whether the people who live today were created as a result of matings between the primitive man and other species that were created during the evolution of the hominid (the name of all creatures belonging to the human family tree).
The answer to the second question was provided last week by Italian researchers. In a study conducted at the University of Ferrara, the researchers compared the genetic load of the primitive man who lived in Europe 30 thousand years ago - which is part of the Homo sapiens branch to which humans belong - and the genetic load of the Neanderthals (another branch of the human family), and the genetic load of the inhabitants of Europe of today. In the test, no DNA remains of the Neanderthals were found in the genetic load of the inhabitants of Europe, and from this they concluded that the ancient man and the Neanderthals did not interbreed.
Bruna. Will return to Chad in the fall
According to paleontology professor (the study of fossils) Michel Brune, head of the research unit at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), the DNA tests do not end the controversy surrounding the human family tree. "This debate started when I was a child," says the 63-year-old Bruna, who is visiting Israel this week on the occasion of receiving the "Dan David" award from Tel Aviv University, "It is clear to us that there was a time when Homo sapiens and Neanderthals lived side by side. There is no scientific proof that the two species mated with each other, but there is also no proof that it didn't happen."
Last year, Prof. Bruna provided a possible answer to the first question, regarding the timing of man's split from the ape. Searching in Chad, Bruna and his men located the earliest relic on the scale of human development. According to the researchers, the hominid they found lived about seven million years ago, about three million years before the earliest hominid discovered up to that time. The researchers call the new hominid "Thomai".
Thomai's remains were accidentally discovered at the bottom of a lake in northern Chad. "All the researchers were looking in South and East Africa, but I asked to work in the west of the continent," Bruna told Haaretz yesterday in an interview. According to Bruna, the remains of Thomai indicate that he was born shortly after the hominids split from the apes. Now Bruna intends to start a search for the most ancient common ancestor of man and apes.
Scientists agree that the split between humans and apes occurred in Africa. "Human evolution took place largely in Africa over a very long period of time," Bruna notes. "Thomai lived about 7 million years ago. The first human remains outside the continent, discovered in China and Asia, are attributed to a period of about 1.8 million years ago." On the question of why the human family tree began specifically in Africa, Bruna finds it difficult to answer. "Obviously it has to do with the hot climate and the rainforests that can be found on the continent, but on the other hand, rainforests and a similar climate can also be found in Asia. There are several hypotheses, but there is no reliable answer."
In the fall, Bruna intends to return to Chad and look for findings that will help complete the puzzle of the path of human development.
The knowledge of evolution - the human elite
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