The oldest human has apparently been discovered in Ethiopia and has links to the most ancient ancestors of modern humans.

Archaeologists have found from their analysis of a jawbone fragment that the genus Homo apparently walked the Earth 400,000 years earlier than previously thought.

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This single most important evidence that leads to this discovery is called the Ledi-Geraru jawbone believed to be 2.4 million years old. The specimen is made up of the left part of the lower jaw and includes five graying teeth.

In Africa, many archaeologists find this continent as a treasure trove for ancient human fossils however, evidence that are dated from two to three million years are challenging to locate and uncover.This fossil is direct evidence from a pivotal time when our human ancestors are going through an evolution, trasitioning from the ape-like Australopithecus to the intelligent version of the modern human today.

In 1974, archaeologists found an important fossil of an Australopithecus they called Lucy that provides clues about our distant human ancestry. This jawbone is believed to belong to someone who lived at the time of major climate shifts in that particular area in Africa.

This is a time when savannahs replaced rainforests and waterways dried up and left smaller ponds and lakes infested with crocodiles.

These changes in climate and environmental surroundings led to pivotal evolutionary adaptations such as a diet change in the early Homo species that ate more meat than earlier ancestors. These distant human ancestors also adapted to use stone tools due to these changes that could be a direct result of a change of diet in early Homo species.

Adapting to stone tools was another important adaptation for this distant human ancestor that lived around 200,000 years after the age of the Australopithecus.

The jaw is evenly proportioned with slim molars that are significantly different from Australopithecus. The only difference between this modern Homo species and modern humans is a slight sloping chin, say researchers.

According to William Kimbel of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, the Ledi jaw helps narrow down the evolutionary gap between the Australopithecus and the early Homo since it's solid evidence of a transitional fossil during a critical time in human evolution.  

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