In our current iteration as homo sapiens? About 200,000 years old.
I disagree with any specific dates even estimates, because humans evolved by populations of a diversity of varieties, subspecies and species? over more than 300,000 years years ago, our immediate ancestors were too similar to humans to draw any kind of time line and our ancestors before were very closely related populations like Neanderthals and Denisons. .
Timeline of human evolution - Wikipedia
Fossils attributed to
H. sapiens, along with stone tools, dated to approximately 300,000 years ago, found at
Jebel Irhoud, Morocco
[47] yield the earliest fossil evidence for
anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Modern human presence in
East Africa (
Gademotta), at 276 kya.
[48] A 177,000-year-old jawbone fossil discovered in Israel in 2017 is the oldest human remains found outside Africa.
[49] However, in July 2019, anthropologists reported the discovery of 210,000 year old remains of a
H. sapiens and 170,000 year old remains of a
H. neanderthalensis in
Apidima Cave,
Peloponnese,
Greece, more than 150,000 years older than previous
H. sapiens finds in Europe.
The problem is there are too many similar anatomical similar subspecies over time that are similar and consider Homo and ancestors to humans. The following demonstrates that there is no clear first human in the ancestry of modern humans.
World's oldest human DNA found in 800,000-year-old tooth of a cannibal
By
Brandon Specktor - Senior Writer April 03, 2020
A protein analysis suggests the supposed cannibal species Homo antecessor was distantly related to humans and Neanderthals.
Skeletal remains of Homo antecessor — an archaic relative of modern humans — found in Spain.
(Image: © Prof. José María Bermúdez de Castro)
In 1994, archaeologists digging in the Atapuerca Mountains in northern Spain discovered the fossilized remains of an archaic group of humans unlike any other ever seen. The bones were cut and fractured, and appeared to have been
cannibalized. The largest skeletal fragments — which came from at least six individuals and dated to at least 800,000 years ago — shared some similarities with modern humans (
Homo sapiens), plus other now-extinct human relatives like
Neanderthals and
Denisovans, but were just different enough to defy classification as any known species.
Researchers ultimately named the previously unknown hominins
Homo antecessor, borrowing the Latin word for "predecessor." Because the bones were among the oldest
Homo fossils ever found in Europe, some researchers speculated that
H. antecessor may have been the elusive common ancestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans. Now, a new study of
H. antecessor's DNA — the single oldest sample of human genetic material ever analyzed — argues that that's probably not the case.
Nature, researchers sequenced the ancient
proteins in the enamel of an 800,000-year-old
H. antecessor tooth, using the proteins to decipher the portion of genetic code that created them. After comparing that code with genetic data from more recent human tooth samples, the team concluded that
H. antecessor's DNA was too different to fit on the same branch of the evolutionary tree as humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Rather, the team wrote,
H. antecessor was probably a "sister species" of the shared ancestor that led to the evolution of modern humans and our extinct hominin cousins.
Related:
What made ancient hominins cannibals? Humans were nutritious and easy prey
"I am happy that the protein study provides evidence that the
Homo antecessor species may be closely related to the last common ancestor of
Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans," study co-author José María Bermúdez de Castro, scientific co-director of the excavations in Atapuerca,
said in a statement. "The features shared by
Homo antecessor with these hominins clearly appeared much earlier than previously thought."
A digital recreation of a
Homo antecessor fossil found in Spain. (Image credit: Prof. Laura Martín-Francés)
To reach these results, the researchers used a method called paleoproteomics — literally, the study of ancient proteins. Using mass spectrometry, which displays the masses of all the molecules in a sample, scientists can identify the specific proteins in a given fossil. Our cells build proteins according to instructions contained in our DNA, with three nucleotides, or letters, in a string of DNA coding for a specific amino acid. Strings of amino acids form a protein. So, the amino acid chains that form each person's unique protein sequence reveal the patterns of nucleotides that form that person's genetic code, lead study author Frido Welker, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Copenhagen, told
Haaretz.com.