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Paris – The remains of roughly shaped stone tools uncovered in China advance the presence of human ancestors in Asia from about 200 millennia to 2.1 million years ago, said scientists Wednesday
. the hominids – the group of humans and our extinct ancestor species – left Africa earlier than archaeologists have been able to demonstrate so far, a team reported in the scientific journal Nature [19659002] "Our discovery means that we now have to reconsider the timing," said co-author of the Robin Dennell study of the Exeter University in England
. that hominids emerged in Africa more than six million years ago, and left the continent in waves of migration from two million years ago.
The first migrants were probably members of the species Homo erectus (right man) or Homo ergaster (working man) – extinct predecessors of our own group, Homo sapiens (wise man), who appeared about 300 000 years ago
The most ancient known African fossil attributed to a family member Homo is a jawbone of 2.8 million years old from Ethiopia.
for hominans in Asia came from Georgia in the form of fossilized skeletal pieces and artifacts dated between 1.77 million and 1.85 million years ago.
There have been other claims, unproven, even older fossil discoveries, the study's authors said
The latest discovery of 96 stone tools, mostly manufactured shards with rudimentary hammers and probably used to cut meat and other foods, was extracted from 17 layers of sediment in the Loess Plateau, south of China. The youngest layer was 1.26 million years old and the oldest 2.12 million years old.
There were no hominid bones.
Dennell and a team used a field of science called "paleomagnetism" to date the sediment layers. These form when dust or mud settles before being covered with a new layer of soil.
Any artefact found in a layer would be the same age as the surrounding ground.
Paleomagnetism is based on changes in the Earth's magnetic field. historical dates are well known to scientists. Dennell and a team measured the magnetic properties of the minerals in the soil layers to determine when they were deposited.
This dates tools, of a type known to have been manufactured by Homo species in Africa for at least 3.3 million years
The document offers strong evidence of a presence hominin in Asia further than we thought, says Dennell.
"There may be older evidence in places like India and Pakistan, but up to now …" With this type of claim, for an early human presence in a region , the evidence must be absolutely waterproof and bombproof. "
Who made the tools?" Probably an early form of our own Homo genre, "said Dennell, although others research is needed to identify the species
AFP
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