Our ancestors may have left Africa hundreds of thousands of years earlier than thought
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/o...er-thought
EXCERPT: More than 2 million years ago, our ancestors were already world travelers, trekking all the way from Africa to Asia, according to stone tools found on a cliff face in north-central China. The age of the tools suggests that the forebears of modern humans left Africa at least 250,000 years earlier than thought; it also supports a minority view that a key human ancestor, Homo erectus, may have originated in Asia, not in Africa...
MORE: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/o...er-thought
No single birthplace of mankind, say scientists
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018...scientists
EXCERPT: The origins of our species have long been traced to east Africa, where the world’s oldest undisputed Homo sapiens fossils were discovered. About 300,000 years ago, the story went, a group of primitive humans there underwent a series of genetic and cultural shifts that set them on a unique evolutionary path that resulted in everyone alive today.
However, a team of prominent scientists is now calling for a rewriting of this traditional narrative, based on a comprehensive survey of fossil, archaeological and genetic evidence. [...] The telltale characteristics of a modern human – globular brain case, a chin, a more delicate brow and a small face – seem to first appear in different places at different times. [...] The latest analysis suggests that this patchwork emergence of human traits can be explained by the existence of multiple populations that were periodically separated for millennia by rivers, deserts, forests and mountains before coming into contact again due to shifts in the climate. [...] Only after tens or hundreds of thousands of years of interbreeding and cultural exchange between these semi-isolated groups, did the fully fledged modern human come into being....
MORE: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018...scientists
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/o...er-thought
EXCERPT: More than 2 million years ago, our ancestors were already world travelers, trekking all the way from Africa to Asia, according to stone tools found on a cliff face in north-central China. The age of the tools suggests that the forebears of modern humans left Africa at least 250,000 years earlier than thought; it also supports a minority view that a key human ancestor, Homo erectus, may have originated in Asia, not in Africa...
MORE: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/o...er-thought
No single birthplace of mankind, say scientists
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018...scientists
EXCERPT: The origins of our species have long been traced to east Africa, where the world’s oldest undisputed Homo sapiens fossils were discovered. About 300,000 years ago, the story went, a group of primitive humans there underwent a series of genetic and cultural shifts that set them on a unique evolutionary path that resulted in everyone alive today.
However, a team of prominent scientists is now calling for a rewriting of this traditional narrative, based on a comprehensive survey of fossil, archaeological and genetic evidence. [...] The telltale characteristics of a modern human – globular brain case, a chin, a more delicate brow and a small face – seem to first appear in different places at different times. [...] The latest analysis suggests that this patchwork emergence of human traits can be explained by the existence of multiple populations that were periodically separated for millennia by rivers, deserts, forests and mountains before coming into contact again due to shifts in the climate. [...] Only after tens or hundreds of thousands of years of interbreeding and cultural exchange between these semi-isolated groups, did the fully fledged modern human come into being....
MORE: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018...scientists