Fossil shows modern humans left Africa earlier than thought
Excerpt: Previously, the oldest fossils of modern humans found outside of Africa were somewhere from 90,000 to 120,000 years old, also in Israel. So given the range in both those estimates, the jawbone might be about 50,000 to 100,000 years older. The jaw was found in 2002 in the collapsed Misliya cave on the western slope of Mount Carmel. Researchers spent the last decade-and-a-half looking for more remains and other fossils before publishing their study. They say the jaw belonged to a young adult of unknown gender. The Science paper suggests modern humans could have left Africa 220,000 years ago, with some of the authors saying maybe it was even earlier. That's in part because the cave also contained about 60,000 flint tools, mostly blades and sharp points, some of which are 250,000 years old, said study co-author Mina Weinstein-Evron. "Now we have to write another story," Weinstein-Evron said. "People were moving all the time."(...) “The tool supply in the cave and other evidence were so complete it basically showed "industry" by the early modern humans, she said. "This guy or woman would have been very busy," she said. "He didn't have enough time do this. He couldn't have made all of it. He must have had some friends." [Ron P.: Anyone who knows me will tell you I’ve often thought–and said so in print–that human beings are much older than is currently believed. Think about how long it must’ve taken to learn to smelt copper, tin, lead, and other metals known in antiquity long before there was any means of writing it down. Think about how many years of carefully observing the skies it must’ve taken to know the inner planets’ periods well enough to have developed horoscopes and to change the year from “new moon to new moon” to a 12 month system. The ancient Egyptians claimed to have had written records for 100,000 years when Caesar burned the Library at Alexandria; even if those years were only one month long, that still means 8,500 12-month years of observations. Later in this article, it points out that some early human works in Europe have been tentatively dated to 490,000 BC. That’s a LONG time ago. Link may not be live.]
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment