Stone tools recovered from an excavation in China suggest that our evolutionary forerunners trekked out of Africa earlier than believed.
Until now, the oldest evidence of human-like creatures outside Africa came from 1.8-million-year-old artifacts and skulls found in the Georgian town of Dmanisi, but the new find pushes that back by at least 250,000 years.
“It’s absolutely a new story,” said archeologist Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, who did not participate in the study. “It means that early humans were getting out of Africa way earlier than we ever realized.”
Photo: AP
That exit came long before Homo sapiens even appeared. The researchers believe the tools were made by another member of the Homo evolutionary group.
The items included several chipped rocks, fragments and hammer stones. The 96 artifacts were dug up in an area known as the Loess Plateau, north of the Qinling Mountains, which divide the north and south of China.
Some of them were as old as 2.1 million years, according to the study that was published in Nature on Wednesday.
“We were very excited,” said Zhu Zhaoyu (朱照宇), a professor at the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry who led the field work. “One of my colleagues suddenly noticed a stone embedded in a steep outcrop. After a short while, more artifacts were found — one after another.”
The tools were distributed throughout layers of dirt, suggesting that our unidentified ancient relatives came back to the same site over and over, possibly following animals to hunt.
Researchers also found bones of pigs and deer, but were not able to provide proof that the tools were used for hunting.
Some experts not involved in the research think that the findings need to be viewed with caution.
“I am skeptical,” said Geoffrey Pope, an anthropologist from William Paterson University in New Jersey. “I suspect this discovery will change very little.”
Sometimes nature can shape stones in a way that they look as if they were manufactured by hand, he said, adding that for example, scientists know that rocks smashed together in a stream can acquire sharp edges.
However, Stony Brook University archeologist Sonia Harmand disagreed.
“This could be, frankly, one of the most important [archeological] sites in the world,” Harmand said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS