5.7 million-year-old discovery could change everything we know about humanity

Science gives us the ability to understand the universe around us; what its rules are, what has come before us and what we can become. It's a wonderful thing, but one of the most compelling things about it is not just that we can discover new things, but that previously-held theories can be altered as we learn more and technology advances. In the spirit of challenging what we know about the world, a recent study has suggested that everything we know about where humans originated from may be wrong. It is widely believed that humanity dates back to Africa millions of years ago, but the people behind this new study claim that this may not be entirely true. Researchers have found a footprint in Crete, Greece, which fundamentally changes our ideas about early human evolution, showing that our ancestors may have been in Europe far earlier than we previously thought. Our initial ideas were based on fossils found in South and East Africa, but a recent footprint found in Crete dates back 5.7 million years, putting the chronology of the species into question. Speaking to The Independent, Professor Per Ahlberg, the author of the study said: "This discovery challenges the established narrative of early human evolution head-on and is likely to generate a lot of debate" "Whether the human origins research community will accept fossil footprints as conclusive evidence of the presence of hominins in the Miocene of Crete remains to be seen." Ahlberg examined the footprint, and noticed something different about the toes. "There's something slightly funny about the big toe," he said, "Its position and shape are very similar to those of a modern human, but it seems more mobile". The researchers believe that it didn't have claws, walked on two feet and had longer inner toes than outer ones. The conclusion that they have come to is that the foot belonged to an early human ancestor, showing that the species was in Europe far earlier than we thought possible. On the other hand, there are some that deny the possibility that we could have originated from anywhere but Africa. Speaking to New Scientist, David Begun from the University of Toronto said: "There are people who simply dismiss the idea because they think it's just not possible" "But it's widely accepted that what became the African savannah fauna - giraffes, antelopes, rhinos - those species lived in the southern Balkans and migrated from there into Africa." But there does seem to be some validity to this new discovery, and some are firmly standing behind it. "They are almost without doubt actual footprints of a bipedally-walking animal," Robin Crompton, from the University of Liverpool, said. Whether it turns out to be a human ancestor is yet to be absolutely proven, but it shows that we may not actually know the complete story of our species' history quite yet.