Tools Unlock Secrets Of Early Man

New research shows that early humans were living in Britain around 700,000 years ago, much earlier than scientists had previously thought.

Using new dating techniques, scientists found that flint tools unearthed in Pakefield, Suffolk, were 200,000 years older than the previous oldest find.

Humans were known to have lived in southern Europe 780,000 years ago but it was unclear when they moved north.

A team of scientists from the UK, Italy and Canada found a total of 32 flint tools in a fossil-rich seam at Pakefield. They say it presents the earliest unequivocal evidence of human activity in northern Europe.

One of the team, Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum's Department of Palaeontology, said the discovery of evidence of early human activity in Britain was startling.

"Until recently I certainly would not have believed that there would have been humans this far back," he said.

Professor Stringer told reporters at a media briefing in central London that the tools bore all the hallmarks of human workmanship, and were not the result of natural erosion.

"One of the worries is that perhaps things like this can be produced by rocks bashing together in a river bed. These are not in this context, so we are confident that these are stone tools."

The scientists said they were happy that the artefacts were 700,000 years old because there was a range of evidence that all converged on the same age.

One factor was the discovery, at the same location, of teeth from a species of water vole that existed in this period.

Professor Anthony Stuart, from the University of London, told reporters this played a key role in dating the site.

"A modern water vole has molar teeth that grow all the time and have no roots. Its ancestor, called Mimomys savini, had rooted teeth which did not grow.

"Nobody in northern Europe has before found any evidence of humans in association with this older water vole."

Until this find, it was thought that humans arrived in northern Europe 500,000 years ago, after archeologists unearthed a shin bone and two incisor teeth along with a number of flint tools at Boxgrove in southern England.

The earliest evidence of human existence in southern Europe dates back 800,000 years at sites in Spain and Italy.

It was thought that humans did not move to the colder north because they were unable to adapt to factors such as longer winters and shorter growing seasons.

However, Professor Stringer said soil samples from the Pakefield site revealed that the climate 700,000 years ago was similar to the present day Mediterranean region.

"We have learned from Pakefield and its fantastic biological evidence that it was significantly warmer so people could move north without adaptation.

The megafauna that would have roamed Europe during this period included rhinoceroses, elephants, sabre-tooth cats and hippopotamuses.

The geography was also very different from the present day. Britain was connected to the continent, which would have allowed early humans to migrate easily.

The land was low with no steep hills. Very large rivers dominated the landscape and could have been used as tracks for migrating humans.

The Pakefield site was on the floodplains of the river Bytham, which was Britain's largest river before it was destroyed by glaciers some 450,000 years ago.

Commenting in Nature, Wil Roebroeks of the Netherlands' Leiden University said the team's data was "Stone Age gold" but it did not provide evidence of colonisation.

"The Pakefield artefacts probably do not testify to a colonisation of the colder temperate environments of northern Europe, but more to a short-lived human expansion of range, in rhythm with climatic oscillations."

"The fact that we know that there were people in Britain at this early date means we can start to look for further evidence of them and perhaps one day be lucky enough to find fossil remains of these people."

"Until this find, it was thought that humans arrived in northern Europe 500,000 years ago, after archeologists unearthed a shin bone and two incisor teeth along with a number of flint tools at Boxgrove in southern England."

I wonder how come these folks aren't considered?

Stranger In A New Land

"Over the past few years, researchers working at a site called Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia have unearthed a trove of spectacularly well preserved human fossils, stone tools and animal remains dated to around 1.75 million years ago--nearly half a million years older than the 'Ubeidiya remains. "

Did humans colonise north Europe earlier than thought?

18:00 14 December 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Rowan Hooper

The prehistoric humans who made the tools lived alongside elephants, lions and other large mammals (Artist’s impression: Natural History Museum)Humans may have colonised northern Europe 200,000 years earlier than previously thought. Stone tools found in eastern England suggest that humans were there at least 700,000 years ago.

"We don't know for sure what species it was," says team member Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, "but my bet is it's an early form of Homo heidelbergensis or Homo antecessor."

H. heidelbergensis is known to have been present in central Europe about 500,000 years ago. Bones were first discovered in 1907 near Heidelberg, Germany, and have since been found in France and Greece. Hominin remains about 800,000 years old have been found in Spain and Italy, indicating that early humans had colonised southern Europe by this time. These early humans have been classed as another species, H. antecessor, though arguments remain over whether it is a really separate species to H. heidelbergensis.

The 32 stone tools, made of black flint and many of them still sharp, were discovered by amateur archaeologists at Pakefield, Suffolk. They have been dated using several methods. Firstly, the magnetic polarity of iron-containing minerals in the sedimentary rocks where the tools were found is aligned north-south, just as it is today. The Earth's magnetic field underwent a polarity reversal 780,000 years ago, so the site must be younger than that.

The tools were found beneath glacial deposits laid down during a period 450,000 years ago when the region was blanketed in ice, so they must be older than this. Also present were fossils of a water vole Mimomys, which was superseded by another vole species called Arvicola around 500,000 years ago. This leads the authors to speculate that the tools are around 700,000 years old.

A new amino-acid dating technique developed by Kirsty Penkman of the University of York in the UK supports this estimate. The method was used to measure the breakdown of amino acids within shells of a freshwater snail found at the site (Nature, vol 438, p 1008).

Back then Britain was connected to what is now the European mainland and had a climate similar to that of the Mediterranean today. The researchers found hippo fossils at the Pakefield site, as well as fossils of other warmth-loving species such as lion, an extinct giant deer called Megaloceros dawkinsi and Palaeoloxodon antiquus, an extinct straight-tusked elephant. Rhinos and hyenas also roamed the region.

The warm climate probably allowed early humans to migrate northwards without the need to develop technology such as fire and clothing or to adapt to a colder climate, says Anthony Stuart of University College London, who coordinated the project.

But the climate got the better of them eventually. "People couldn't settle here long-term," says Stringer. "They would have been swept away by the cold stage that followed about 100,000 years ago."

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