Ancient skull dug up in Henan may bury 'Out of Africa' theory...an anatomically modern Homo sapiens nearly 100,000 years old. If the estimate is correct and if the skull, broken into 16 pieces seemingly by a powerful strike, demonstrates a feature of the East Asian population, then one of palaeoanthropology's paradigms - "Out of Africa" - may be shattered... Chinese palaeoanthropologists have unearthed some evidence in the past few decades - some teeth, bones, flint tools and domestic animal remains. But what they found was scant, partial or indirect compared with remains found in Africa - an arid, less populated and largely exposed continent where conditions for fossil preservation and discovery are nearly perfect... The preliminary result of optically stimulated luminescence dating completed by Peking University shows that the age of the skull ranges from 80,000 to 100,000 years.
Stephen Chen
Thursday, January 24, 2008
South China Morning Post
That should have been the headline on the lead article. (It will get lots more attention)