A Chinese discovery suggests that human parents left Africa earlier

NEW YORK (AP) – Stone tools salvaged during a dig in China suggest that our evolutionary ancestors made their trek out of Africa sooner than we thought.

Up to now, the earliest evidence of man-like creatures outside Africa came from artifacts and skulls dating back 1.8 million years ago. years and found in the Georgian city of Dmanisi. But the new discovery repels this for 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, in Germany, who did not participate in the study. "It means that the first humans left Africa earlier than we ever realized."

This came well before our own species, Homo sapiens, appeared. The researchers believe the tools were made by another member of the Homo evolutionary 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, according to the Nature journal of Wednesday.

"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 land, suggesting that our unidentified anonymous parents returned to the same site again and again, possibly following animals for hunting. 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 William Paterson University in 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 crushed rocks in a stream can acquire sharp edges.

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

"This could be, frankly, one of the most important (archaeological) sites in the world," said Harmand, who studies stone tools.