Human teeth discovered in southern China suggest that people left the African continent earlier than prevailing theories suggest, a study published on Wednesday said.
Homo sapiens reached present-day China 80,000 to 120,000 years ago, according to the study, which could redraw the ideas of migration of ancient people.
“The model that is generally accepted is that modern humans left Africa only 50,000 years ago,” said Maria Martinon-Torres, a researcher at University College London and co-author of the study.
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“In this case, we are saying the H sapiens is out of Africa much earlier,” she told journal Nature, which published the study.
While the route they traveled remains unknown, previous research suggests the most likely path out of East Africa to east Asia was across the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East.
The findings might also mean that people arrived in China well before they went to Europe.
There is no evidence to suggest that H sapiens entered the European continent earlier than 45,000 years ago, at least 40,000 years after they showed up in present-day China.
The 47 teeth exhumed from a knee-deep layer of grey, sandy clay inside the Fuyan Cave near the town of Daoxian closely resemble the dental gear of “contemporary humans,” according to the study.
They could only have come from a population who migrated from Africa, rather than one descended from an another species of early man such as the extinct Homo erectus, the authors said.
The scientists also unearthed the remains of 38 mammals, including specimens of five extinct species, one of them a giant panda larger than those in existence today.
No tools were found.
“Judging by the cave environment, it may not have been a living place for humans,” lead author Liu Wu (劉武) from the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing told reporters.
The study rewrites the timeline of China’s early history.
Up to now, the earliest evidence of H sapiens east of the Arabian Peninsula came from the Tianyuan Cave near Beijing, and dated from no more than 40,000 years ago.
The new discovery raises questions about why it took so long for H sapiens to find their way to nearby Europe.
“Why is it that modern humans — who were already at the gates — didn’t really get into Europe?” Martinon-Torres asked.
Liu and colleagues proposed two explanations.
The first is the intimidating presence of Neanderthal man. While these people eventually died out, they were spread across the European continent up until at least 50,000 years ago.
“The classic idea is that H sapiens ... took over the Neanderthal empire, but maybe Neanderthals were a kind of ecological barrier, and Europe was too small a place” for both, Martinon-Torres said.
Another impediment might have been the cold.
The proposed Ice Age that is said to have ended 12,000 years ago saw ice sheets stretched across a good part of the European continent, a forbidding environment for a group emerging from the relative warmth of East Africa.
“H sapiens originated in or near the tropics, so it makes sense that the species’ initial dispersal was eastwards rather than northwards, where winter temperatures rapidly fell below freezing,” Robin Dennell of the University of Exeter said in a commentary, also in Nature.
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