A Chinese discovery suggests that human parents left Africa earlier

NEW YORK (AP) – The stone tools salvaged during a dig in China suggest that our evolutionary ancestors left Africa earlier than we thought.

Until now, the earliest evidence of human creatures outside of Africa are artifacts and skulls found a million years old in the Georgian city of Dmanisi. But the new discovery is pushing it back at least 250,000 years.

"It's absolutely a new story," said archaeologist Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, which does not Did not participate in the study. "This means that the first humans had come out of Africa sooner than we had ever realized."

This Wednesday, February 28, 2018 picture provided by Zhaoyu Zhu shows a stone flake that was found in an archaeological site on the Loess Plateau in China. In a report released on Wednesday, July 11, 2018, scientists believe that stone tools like this could have belonged to our evolutionary precursors who lived 2.1 million years ago. (Zhaoyu Zhu via AP)

This output came well before our own species, Homo sapiens, even appeared. The researchers believe the tools were made by another member of the evolutionary Homo group.

Items included several chipped rocks, fragments and hammer stones. The 96 artifacts were unearthed in an area known as the Loess Plateau, north of the Qinling Mountains, which divide north and south China.

Some of them were as old as 2.1 million years old. Nature Journal

"We were very excited," said Zhaoyu Zhu, 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 spur and after a short while, more artifacts were found – one after the other."

The tools were distributed through the layers of dirt. the same site again and again, maybe follow animals to hunt. The researchers also found bones of pigs and deer, but were not able to provide evidence that the tools were used for hunting.

Some experts who do not participate in research believe that the results should be taken with caution. I am skeptical, "said Geoffrey Pope, an anthropologist at the William Paterson University of New Jersey. "I suspect that this discovery will change very little."

The problem, he said, is that sometimes nature can model stones in a way that they seem to have been handcrafted. Scientists know, for example, that rocks broken together in a stream can acquire sharp edges.

But Sonia Harmand, archaeologist at Stony Brook University in New York, does not agree

. The most important (archaeological) sites in the world, "said Harmand, who studies stone tools.

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Emiliano Rodriguez Mega is the AP Health and Science Trainee. Follow him on Twitter: @mapache_rm

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Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Science Education Department of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.At the AP is solely responsible for all content.

This Sunday, July 30, 2017 picture provided by Zhaoyu Zhu shows a large core of quartzite rock found on the Loess Plateau in China. In a report released Wednesday, July 11, 2018, scientists believe this rock was minted to create flakes with sharp edges. (Zhaoyu Zhu by AP)

This Friday, June 11, 2010 picture provided by Zhaoyu Zhu shows the landscape near an archaeological site in the Loess Plateau in China, where researchers found stone tools old 2 , 1 million years old. This discovery published Wednesday, July 11, 2018 pushes back the date on which human relatives left Africa. (Zhaoyu Zhu via AP)

On this Sunday, December 10, 2017 photo provided by Zhaoyu Zhu, scientists examine a piece of quartzite rock that has been unearthed from the oldest layer of earth from a plateau site. Loess in China. In a report released on Wednesday, July 11, 2018, scientists believe that stone tools like this could have belonged to our evolutionary precursors who lived 2.1 million years ago. (Zhaoyu Zhu via AP)