News and Views On the earliest human occupation in North Africa: a response to Geraads et al. Mohamed Sahnouni a *, Djillali Hadjouis b , Jan van der Made c , Abd-el-Kader Derradji d , Antoni Canals e , Mohamed Medig d , Hocine Belahrech f , Zoheir Harichane g , Merouane Rabhi g a CRAFT Research Center, Indiana University, 419 North Indiana Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA b Laboratoire De ´partemental d’Arche ´ologie du Val de Marne, 7–9 rue Guy Moquet, 94800, Villejuif, France c Departamento de Paleobiologia, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (CSIC), Jose ´ Gutierrez Abascal, 2, 28006 Madrid, Spain d Department of Archaeology, University of Algiers, 2 rue Didouche Mourad, 16000 Algiers, Algeria e Area de Prehistoria, Universitat Rovira I Virgili, 1 Placa Imperial Tarraco, 43005 Tarragona, Spain f National Museum of Se ´tif, Algeria g Agence Nationale d’Arche ´ologie et des Monuments Historiques, Algiers, Algeria Received 4 February 2004; accepted 8 April 2004 Keywords: North Africa; Algeria; Ain Hanech; Early Paleolithic; Oldowan; Plio-Pleistocene; Early Hominids Introduction Geraads et al. (2004) have published a paper on the earliest hominid occupation in North Africa that addresses the previous publication by Sahnouni et al. (2002) of further research at the Oldowan site of Ain Hanech, Algeria. Geraads et al. cast doubt on the suggested age of 1.8 Ma for Ain Hanech. These authors disagree on: 1) the paleomagnetic interpretation; 2) the biochrono- logical interpretation, especially of Equus and Kolpochoerus; and 3) the Oldowan character of the lithic assemblages. In Geraads et al.’s view, a “best fit” age for Ain Hanech is 1.2 Ma, while they consider the age of Thomas Quarry 1 (Layer L) to be between 1.0 and 1.5 Ma. Thus, if they are correct, this latter site, with a fauna mostly identi- cal to that of the middle Pleistocene site of Tighenif (formerly Ternifine) and associated with a typical Acheulean industry, would be contempor- aneous with Ain Hanech, with an early early Pleistocene fauna associated with an Oldowan industry. As outlined below, we disagree not only with this conclusion, but with each of the three major criticisms leveled by Geraads et al. as well. Paleomagnetism Geraads et al. criticized the Ain Hanech paleo- magnetic results (Sahnouni et al., 1996) by arguing * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-812-876-0080x212; fax: +1-812-876-0086 E-mail addresses: msahnoun@indiana.edu (M. Sahnouni), Djillali.Hadjouis@wanadoo.fr (D. Hadjouis), mcnjv538@mncn.csic.es (J. van der Made), derradji_kader@hotmail.com (A. Derradji), ancls@fll.urv.es (A. Canals), Mohamed.medig@yahoo.com (M. Medig), hbelahreche@yahoo.com (H. Belahrech), harichanez@laboarcheo-univalg.edu.dz (Z. Harichane), mrabehi@yahoo.com (M. Rabhi). Journal of Human Evolution 46 (2004) 763–775 0047-2484/04/$ - see front matter  2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2004.04.003