Teeth from Chinese cave recast history of early human migration

According to Jean-Jacques Hublin, a paleoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, later waves of human migration may have replaced the early settlers in Daoxian County in Hunan Province, China-where ancient teeth found.

After geological dating tests and analysis, the scientists determined that the teeth belonged to Homo sapiens, the species of modern humans that lived between 80,000 and 120,000 years ago.

Animal bones and fossils were discovered among the human remains and tests also shows that they are as old as the teeth.

The teeth don’t necessarily lend credence to such a narrative, but they do prove modern humans were in Asia 70,000 years before Europe and the Mediterranean.

Beneath the flowstone, the scientists also found mammalian fossils from 38 species as well as five extinct large mammals, including Stegodon orientalis (a relative of mammoths and elephants) and Ailuropoda baconi (an ancestor of the giant panda). Martinon-Torres suggests that humans could not gain a foothold in Europe until Neanderthals there were teetering on extinction. She also is a published poet. She now is a book editor, writes legal blogs, and is trying to finish a book.

“This is a rock-solid case for having early humans-definitely Homo sapiens-at an early date in eastern Asia”, says Petraglia, in the statement.

“They are indeed the earliest Homo sapiens with fully modern morphologies outside of Africa”, Wu Liu, lead author of the study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Discovery News.

Homo sapiens may have gravitated out of Africa and into Asia much earlier than previously thought. The most recent research puts the migration out of Africa at around 130,000 years ago, which is much earlier than was previously thought.

“Why is it that modern humans – who were already at the gates – didn’t really get into Europe?” asked Dr Martinon-Torres.

Older traces of modern humans have been seen outside Africa, such as the roughly 100,000-year-old remains from the Skhul and Qafzeh caves in Israel.

In a journal commentary, Robin Dennell of the University of Exeter in England suggests that cold winters might be a better explanation. What is the origin of this population (of people in China)? “Maybe there’s not only one (migration) out of Africa, (maybe) there are several out of Africa”.

The cache of teeth almost went unnoticed, Dr Wu said. However, when and how they dispersed throughout other areas has remained a mystery.

“By thinking about the cave environment, we realized that human fossils might be found there”, he said.