快猫短视频

ANCESTRAL humans may have left Africa half a million years earlier than generally thought, according to archaeologists who claim to have found a primitive stone tool from 2.6 million years ago in northern India.

If early humans really were there then, it would mean they migrated out of Africa remarkably early. The oldest evidence of the Homo lineage is from 2.8 million years ago at Ledi-Geraru in Ethiopia. This means these hominins would have had to expand their range rapidly to reach India.

The claim is being treated with caution by other archaeologists, who say the stone is so simple that it could have got its shape without human involvement, and that its age is uncertain.

Since 2003, Anne Dambricourt Malass茅 at the Institute of Human Palaeontology in Paris, France, and her colleagues have been , in the foothills of the Himalayas. Silts and sediments from what was once a river and marsh are preserved there.

In 2016, the team described and a , which the group argued were made by humans using the tools. Such finds are fairly common, but the team claimed they were very old: 2.6 million years old, based on the estimated age of the sediments.

Other archaeologists were dubious, because the remains had been found lying on the land surface rather than buried in a layer of sediment, making it hard to judge their age.

But that same year, team member Mukesh Singh at the Society for Archaeological and Anthropological Research in Chandigarh, India, spotted a stone within one of the datable bands of silt at the site. He thought it might be a stone tool. The following year, the team excavated it, and now think that it is a tool called a chopper. An ancient individual removed flakes from one side of the stone, leaving an irregular cutting edge, says the team.

The most likely explanation is that 鈥渁 species of Homo left east Africa [at least 2.6 million years ago]鈥�, says Dambricourt Malass茅.

Archaeologists contacted by 快猫短视频 were cautious about the find. Wil Roebroeks at Leiden University in the Netherlands isn鈥檛 convinced by the chopper tool, because it is of such a primitive type that it could have been produced naturally, perhaps by stones colliding in a fast-flowing river.

However, Roebroeks says more evidence would sway him. Asia has been historically understudied, he says, and has produced a stream of surprises in recent years, so 鈥渙ne should keep an open mind鈥�.

鈥淚t would be extraordinary, and extraordinary claims also need extraordinary evidence,鈥� says Mark Sier at the Spanish National Research Centre for Human Evolution in Burgos.

Significantly, evidence is growing that hominins were in聽Asia earlier than previously thought. In 2018, were described from Shangchen in China. There is also Longgupo in聽China, where stone artefacts and hominin remains have been found that some people claim are 2.5聽million years old.

Sign up to Our Human Story, a free monthly newsletter on the revolution in archaeology and human evolution