El Graeco up earlier than rest

Domenikos Theotokopoulos, from Crete, was known as ‘El Greco’ in Toledo. Now another Greek shares the famous nickname: ‘El Graeco’ is short for Graecopithecus freybergi. The dental records of this ape-like pre-human, who lived in the Eastern Mediterranean area, have put the cat among the anthropological pigeons. 

They show, some experts are claiming, that modern humans evolved in the Balkan region and not in Africa as was previously supposed. The research leading to this conclusion is described in two papers just published in the PLOS ONE journal.

Chimpanzees are our nearest living relatives. Their evolutionary line and the one leading to us diverged sometime between five and seven million years ago. All remains of pre-humans, or ‘hominins’, discovered so far have been African. ‘Lucy’, whose bones came to light in 1974, lived there about 3.2 million years ago. The genus Homo first appeared between two and three million years ago.