The researchers found skull fragments that date to 63,000 years ago. Credit: Laura Shackelford
Posted on 08/22/2012 5:41:52 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
An ancient skull recovered from a cave in the Annamite Mountains in northern Laos is the oldest modern human fossil found in Southeast Asia, researchers report. The discovery pushes back the clock on modern human migration through the region by as much as 20,000 years and indicates that ancient wanderers out of Africa left the coast and inhabited diverse habitats much earlier than previously appreciated.
The team described its finding in a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists, who found the skull in 2009, were likely the first to dig for ancient bones in Laos since the early 1900s, when a team found skulls and skeletons of several modern humans in another cave in the Annamite Mountains. Those fossils were about 16,000 years old, much younger than the newly found skull, which dates to between 46,000 and 63,000 years old...
No other artifacts have yet been found with the skull, suggesting that the cave was not a dwelling or burial site, Shackelford said. It is more likely that the person died outside and the body washed into the cave sometime later, she said.
The find reveals that early modern human migrants did not simply follow the coast and go south to the islands of Southeast Asia and Australia, as some researchers have suggested, but that they also traveled north into very different types of terrain, Shackelford said...
The discovery also bolsters genetic studies that indicate that modern humans occupied that part of the world at least 60,000 years ago, she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
The researchers found skull fragments that date to 63,000 years ago. Credit: Laura Shackelford
This is getting on my last nerve. I didn’t wander out of Africa and I am sick ro death of people who should know better by now trying to convince me that I did.
|
|
|
| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
|
|
Multiregionalism ping -- although a quote in the story is, 'this supports Out of Africa'. I'm convinced that people who say that would claim that pretty much anything does. |
|
|
|
|
Just because onama is trying desperately to turn us into Zimbabwe don’t make it so.
"LM1 was discovered in 1969 and is one of the world's oldest known cremations.[1][3] LM3, discovered in 1974, was an early human inhabitant of the continent of Australia, who is believed to have lived between 68,000 and 40,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch. The remains are the oldest anatomically modern human remains found in Australia to date. His exact age is a matter of ongoing dispute."
“The find reveals that early modern human migrants did not simply follow the coast and go south to the islands of Southeast Asia and Australia, as some researchers have suggested, but that they also traveled north into very different types of terrain, Shackelford said...”
Don’t you love how these scientists speak as if ancient humans were traveling through the modern geography, when they also tell us that the majority of land that existed in SE Asia at that time is now underwater?
:’) Wholeheartedly agree.
Not to mention that over 100,000 years before this guy lived, early humans crossed miles of sea to get to an island that’s never been connected.
His name was Jerry.
That was just what he insisted people call him. Could be an alias...
A new TV program named 'The First 48,000' is being considered.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
