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[ponpo]

Fossil teeth place humans in Asia '20,000 years early'

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34531861

Fossil finds from China have shaken up the traditional narrative of humankind's dispersal from Africa.

Scientists working in Daoxian, south China, have discovered teeth belonging to modern humans that date to at least 80,000 years ago. This is 20,000 years earlier than the widely accepted "Out of Africa" migration that led to the successful peopling of the globe by our species.

Details of the work are outlined in the journal Nature.

Several lines of evidence - including genetics and archaeology - support a dispersal of our species from Africa 60,000 years ago. Early modern humans living in the horn of Africa are thought to have crossed the Red Sea via the Bab el Mandeb straits, taking advantage of low water levels. All non-African people alive today are thought to derive from this diaspora. Now, excavations at Fuyan Cave in Daoxian have unearthed a trove of 47 human teeth.

Some fossils of modern humans that predate the Out of Africa migration are already known, from the Skhul and Qafzeh caves in Israel. But these have been regarded as part of a failed early dispersal of modern humans who probably went extinct. However, the discovery of unequivocally modern fossils in China clouds the picture.

"Some researchers have proposed earlier dispersals in the past," said Dr Martinón-Torres. "We really have to understand the fate of this migration. We need to find out whether it failed and they went extinct or they really did contribute to later people. "Maybe we really are descendents of the dispersal 60,000 years ago - but we need to re-think our models. Maybe there was more than one Out of Africa migration."

Prof Chris Stringer, from London's Natural History Museum said the new study was "a game-changer" in the debate about the spread of modern humans."Many workers (often including me) have argued that the early dispersal of modern humans from Africa into the Levant recorded by the fossils from Skhul and Qafzeh at about 120,000 years ago was essentially a failed dispersal which went little or no further than Israel."

"However, the large sample of teeth from Daoxian seem unquestionably modern in their size and morphology, and they look to be well-dated by uranium-thorium methods to at least 80,000 years. At first sight this seems to be consistent with an early dispersal across southern Asia by a population resembling those known from Skhul and Qafzeh. "But the Daoxian fossils resemble recent human teeth much more than they look like those from Skhul and Qafzeh, which retain more primitive traits. So either there must have been rapid evolution of the dentitions of a Skhul-Qafzeh type population in Asia by about 80,000 years, or the Daoxian teeth represent a hitherto-unsuspected early and separate dispersal of more modern-looking humans."

 

[davepoobond]

would make sense if there was an earlier migration that was towards China. That would explain humans being in the Americas a lot better IMO

 

[Paskil]

It's crazy that the population that went to the Americas didn't result in allopatric speciation. Such a long time to be separate.

 

[CrazyDude]

It's crazy that the population that went to the Americas didn't result in allopatric speciation. Such a long time to be separate.

I remember reading somewhere that their were more than one migration in the Americas.

 

[DonMigs85]

Inuit and Japanese are cousins to each other

 

[RodanCeros]

As someone with extremely limited knowledge of the subject, I admit I've always found it improbable that humans settled SE Asia, Polynesia, and the Americas in the time it took other humans to settle Europe, "advance civilization" and finally cross the Atlantic. I'm not even sure what the commonly held beliefs are regarding human dispersal theories, and its something I should research more, but hearing that humans may have left Africa and headed East far earlier than originally proposed makes sense to my layman's mind.

 

[Musician]

I remember reading somewhere that their were more than one migration in the Americas.

I never understood how humans back then managed to get there. The bering strait?

 

[Kieli]

I need to get some sleep. I was seriously struggling to understand the title given that it had two consecutive verbs.

Took me a while to realize "finds" means "findings" or discoveries and not the verb.

 

[CrazyDude]

I never understood how humans back then managed to get there. The bering strait?

There are new theories suggesting it's a mix of using boats and crossing the strait.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

It's crazy that the population that went to the Americas didn't result in allopatric speciation. Such a long time to be separate.

There were probaby multiple waves. The first wave was also just not that long ago - about 14,800 years at the most, which is only ~740 generations of humans.

 

[Paskil]

As someone with extremely limited knowledge of the subject, I admit I've always found it improbable that humans settled SE Asia, Polynesia, and the Americas in the time it took other humans to settle Europe, "advance civilization" and finally cross the Atlantic. I'm not even sure what the commonly held beliefs are regarding human dispersal theories, and its something I should research more, but hearing that humans may have left Africa and headed East far earlier than originally proposed makes sense to my layman's mind.

Ken Ham wants to know if you were there. They got there on dinosaurs, and it was like 6000 years ago.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

As someone with extremely limited knowledge of the subject, I admit I've always found it improbable that humans settled SE Asia, Polynesia, and the Americas in the time it took other humans to settle Europe, "advance civilization" and finally cross the Atlantic. I'm not even sure what the commonly held beliefs are regarding human dispersal theories, and its something I should research more, but hearing that humans may have left Africa and headed East far earlier than originally proposed makes sense to my layman's mind.

They didn't. The earliest trace of human arrival in the Americas is dated at around 14,500 BCE to 13,200 BCE. Europeans didn't cross the Atlantic until 1492 CE (excluding brief Norse and Breton excursions). That's a big old ~15000 year gap.

 

[pants]

Ken Ham wants to know if you were there. They got there on dinosaurs, and it was like 6000 years ago.

Ken Ham should try and ask Keanu Reeves this

 

[BocoDragon]

It's crazy that the population that went to the Americas didn't result in allopatric speciation. Such a long time to be separate.

I believe I heard that it is actually the Australian Aborigines who are the most long isolated branch of the human family.

 

[way more]

They keep pushing back "humankind." I don't know if that's a positive thing to say we've been here so long or it's depressing that we lived between the stages of animal and historical for so long.

 

[nephilimdj]

I never understood how humans back then managed to get there. The bering strait?

Look at how far the Polynesians traveled to land in NZ 3,000 years ago, its pretty insane with what they had.
I still don't get how many survived, must of been a awful time.

 

[Soodanim]

would make sense if there was an earlier migration that was towards China. That would explain humans being in the Americas a lot better IMO

I misread that as "That would explain humans in the Americas being a lot better" and wondered why you weren't banned.

 

[dr3upmushroom]

They keep pushing back "humankind." I don't know if that's a positive thing to say we've been here so long or it's depressing that we lived between the stages of animal and historical for so long.

Wait what? We're not animals? Are we synthetic beings now?

 

[Chichikov]

Look at how far the Polynesians traveled to land in NZ 3,000 years ago, its pretty insane with what they had.
I still don't get how many survived, must of been a awful time.

Polynesian navigation is just mind blowing.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Polynesian navigation is just mind blowing.

The most mind-blowing part is when you find out where the inhabitants of Madagascar travelled from.

 

[dr3upmushroom]

Look at how far the Polynesians traveled to land in NZ 3,000 years ago, its pretty insane with what they had.
I still don't get how many survived, must of been a awful time.

A big misconception of modern people is that primitive life is somehow always more treacherous or miserable.

 

[Walpurgis]

The most mind-blowing part is when you find out where the inhabitants of Madagascar travelled from.

Blow me.

 

[BreezyLimbo]

A big misconception of modern people is that primitive life is somehow always more treacherous or miserable.

If those Roman and Greek pots are any kind of significance, everyone was always naked, wrestling, and having sex. Seems like a pretty great time.

I mean, our ancestors had to be happy enough to continue advancing society.

 

[Napoleonthechimp]

Look at how far the Polynesians traveled to land in NZ 3,000 years ago, its pretty insane with what they had.
I still don't get how many survived, must of been a awful time.

Follow the migration of birds and island hop. Job done.

Australian aboriginals journeying from Africa across the Indian ocean to Australia seems like a far more daunting journey.

 

[way more]

Wait what? We're not animals? Are we synthetic beings now?

Animals can make history. Take for example, humans.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Blow me.

 

[Chichikov]

Follow the migration of birds and island hop. Job done.

Australian aboriginals journeying from Africa across the Indian ocean to Australia seems like a far more daunting journey.

They didn't sailed east from Africa to Australia, they came from Indonesia/PNG which requires smaller hops than Australia to NZ.
Also, the sea levels were much lower than toady, some speculate that there was a land bridge at the time (though as far as I know this is contested).

 

[macfoshizzle]

 

[LQX]

Every few years China seems to find new evidence of Hominidae originating from there. Possibly, but even without evidence it is so obvious they have issues with the notion Africa is where it all started.

 

[Walpurgis]

Wow. That truly is insane. I just looked Madagascar up and it was only settled 350 BCE and 550 CE, making it one of the last major land masses to be settled by humans (it's the fourth largest island in the world). Because the island has been isolated for so long, over 90% of its wildlife is found nowhere else on this Earth. Ethnically and culturally, the people living there today are a mix of the African Bantu that arrived in 1000 CE and the South East Asians that were there first. The population is rapidly growing with 22 million people there today (12 million, 22 years ago).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar

 

[Chichikov]

Every few years China seems to find new evidence of Hominidae originating from there. Possibly, but even without evidence it is so obvious they have issues with the notion Africa is where it all started.

There isn't any serious anthropologist who support the idea that homo sapiens didn't originated in Africa, and yes, that includes Chinese anthropologists.
And by the way, this study don't challenge that notion in any shape or form.

 

[Slayer-33]

Wait what, what's going on

 

[wanderingprostheyltite]

Wait what, what's going on

There's a dick and balls in there somewhere, I'm sure of it.

 

[sphagnum]

It's crazy to think how long modern humans/homo sapiens sapiens have been around when you realize that all of our recorded history is only about 5,000 years old, and all of "civilization" (in the sense of being agriculturalists and developing urban life) only started around 12,000 years ago. And yet modern humans have been around for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years longer than that. So much history that will never be known. Just think about that - all of the history that we have written, which is impossible to know by one person in its entirety already, multiplied multiple times over. How many languages, cultures, legends, myths, stories have there been that will simply never be brought to light?

And even beyond that, humans as a wider group outside of homo sapiens have been around for even more hundreds of thousands of years. And they coexisted with us! Possibly even until only ~10k BC in some areas.

And even the distance in time to the beginning of archaic humans is a drop in the bucket compared to how long the time was between the extinction of the dinosaurs and the rise of humans.

It's also really fun to think about how long humans have been putzing around with things, like this lion-man sculpture from 40,000 BC. Not 4,000 BC. 40,0000 BC.

 

[BocoDragon]

They keep pushing back "humankind." I don't know if that's a positive thing to say we've been here so long or it's depressing that we lived between the stages of animal and historical for so long.

It's crazy to think how long modern humans/homo sapiens sapiens have been around when you realize that all of our recorded history is only about 5,000 years old, and all of "civilization" (in the sense of being agriculturalists and developing urban life) only started around 12,000 years ago. And yet modern humans have been around for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years longer than that. So much history that will never be known. Just think about that - all of the history that we have written, which is impossible to know by one person in its entirety already, multiplied multiple times over. How many languages, cultures, legends, myths, stories have there been that will simply never be brought to light?

Much ado about "history" or "writing".

I bet future civilizations will find pre-digital civilization just as unfathomable and comparably non-existent.

"Imagine for thousands of years, people lived and died without leaving a trail of digital breadcrumbs. It's like we can't know anything about them at all!"

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Wait what, what's going on

What's going in is Malay-Polynesian people migrating from Indonesia to Madagascar across 7,564 km of open sea with no intervening place to stop. Bad-ass.

 

[SolarPowered]

Wait what, what's going on

Mankind's first double dare.

 

[Walpurgis]

Wait what, what's going on

The people from Indonesia came first, then Africans and Middle Easterns about 1000 years later. The Middle Easterns brought Arabic with them so this is when written history began. Europeans came 500 years later in 1500.

 

[jerry1594]

Inuit and Japanese are cousins to each other

I don't get what you mean by that.

 

[DonMigs85]

I don't get what you mean by that.

Their ancestors were raised on the barren plains of Mongolia

 

[Gnome]

I don't get what you mean by that.

Look up Ainu people, it'll give you a better idea.

 

[BocoDragon]

I don't get what you mean by that.

It means he got everything he knows about the Siberian->American migration from MGS1.

 

[FelixOrion]

Wait what, what's going on

You know that colored-outline-guys-having-a-gangbang NeoGAF meme?

 

[DonMigs85]

It means he got everything he knows about the Siberian->American migration from MGS1.

I've been ratted out

 

[BocoDragon]

I've been ratted out

Crawl on the ground like the snake you are.

 

[GaimeGuy]

I never understood how humans back then managed to get there. The bering strait?

Yes. The bering strait connected north america and russia by land as recently 5-10k years ago


Also, this is more recent than when humans would have settled north america, but I would not be surprised if some polynesians found their ways to shores by boat 500-1000 years earlier than this map depicts

 

[Kevtones]

I wish some Ancient Aliens Supporter would just plant some vial sometimes

 

[jerry1594]

Look up Ainu people, it'll give you a better idea.

Yeah it gives me this idea:

It means he got everything he knows about the Siberian->American migration from MGS1.

 

[nelsonroyale]

Very interesting. I will wait for more info regarding their lineage.

 

[Ikael]

They keep pushing back "humankind." I don't know if that's a positive thing to say we've been here so long or it's depressing that we lived between the stages of animal and historical for so long.

It is an AWESOME thing, for it makes the possibility of pre-Summerian civilizations far more likely. Between this discovery and Gobekli Tepe, the chances of finding even more ancient human civilizations than previously thought are growing each passing day, me thinks.