Friday, January 12, 2007

New signposts on the path of early human migration
An old South African skull and an ancient settlement along the Don River in Russia lend crucial support to the idea that modern humans spread from Africa across Eurasia only 50,000 years ago.

African fossils show that modern humans had evolved by 195,000 years ago. Yet the only evidence of modern humans outside of Africa for the subsequent 150,000 years is a couple of sites about 100,000 years old in Israel which appear to have been abandoned as the Ice Age grew more severe.

It had been a mystery what our ancestors were doing before the first evidence of their presence in Australia 45,000 to 50,000 years ago, and about 35,000 years ago in Europe.


More on the Russian sites here.

And here.