Jebel Irhoud: Morocco's 300,000-Year-Old Modern Face For decades, the textbook narrative of human evolution placed the cradle of anatomically modern Homo sapiens firmly in East Africa (specifically Ethiopia) around 200,000 years ago. However, groundbreaking multi-disciplinary excavations at the desert site of Jebel Irhoud , located just 100 kilometers western of Marrakesh, Morocco, completely shattered this linear model. The site yielded the remains of at least five individuals directly dated to