The Omo I Modern Humans Discovered In Omo Kibish, Ethiopia

More compelling reasons to believe that Africa is indeed the origin of humankind continued to resurface.

This time around, not about the 19th-century transatlantic slave trade but of a bone unearthed in Omo Kibish, an archeological site along the Omo River in Southern Ethiopia.

Human fossils were discovered at the Omo Kibish by an international expedition led by a Kenyan archeologist, Kamoya Kimeu, in 1967. Still, after a good dating years later using laser ablation elemental Uranium, Thorium, and Uranium-series isotope analysis, the fossils were dated to be 195,000 years old.

Among the discovered fossils were a skull, vertebrae fragments, ribs, fragments of both right foot and lower legs, a piece of the left pelvis, the lower end of the right leg, bones of the right hand, upper limbs, and shoulder bones.

Omo-1, as called, was believed to be a hunter around the East Africa savanna; he was thought to have weighed 150 pounds and was 5’9″. With the discoveries made at the Omo site, Genetic research claimed that modern humans – the Homo Sapiens- have existed for over 200,000 years.

Another site still along the Omo River, Omo II, was discovered. At the site, skulls showed more primitive characteristics than the Omo I was believed to be 130,000 years old.
Two pieces of a femur belonging to Omo I. While the lower part of the femur was discovered at the Omo Kibish; the upper part was unearthed at the same location in 2001.

According to a theory (Out of Africa I) that proposed that Homo Sapiens began in Africa 200,000 years, non-African modern humans were proposed to be the early Homo Sapiens’ descendants that left Africa.

Although Omo I is widely believed to be the oldest fossil, in 2017, some fossils were discovered at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and were dated to be 300,000 years old, making it the oldest known anatomically modern human – the Homo Sapiens.