A halfway finger’s breadth might deepen what we think we knew about human migration from Africa . AsGizmodoreports , a new study inNature Ecology and Evolutionanalyzes what may be the oldest modern human fogey outside of Africa and the Levant ( modern - day Israel , Lebanon , Syria , and Jordan ) . find in an ancient lake bottom in the Arabian desert , the bone has been dated to 88,000 eld ago , indicating that human migration from Africa may have start much to begin with than previously thought .
Previous research has suggested thatHomo sapienspopulations migrate out of Africa and into Eurasia ( perhaps thanks toclimate modification ) in one bad undulation around 60,000 year ago . The fossilized finger bone , about an inch long , indicates the story might be more complicated .
A paleontologist with the Saudi Geological Survey , Iyad Zalmout , found the off-white in 2016 . He and his fellow researchers created 3D scans of the ivory and compared them with other digit bones fromHomo sapiens , Neanderthals , and modern primates like gorillas to determine that it is , in fact , a human bone . They then dated the fogy using U series dating , a measure of the bone ’s ratio of radioactive constituent , to get at an forecast age of rough 88,000 years old . They also found animal fossils and deposit at the land site to be around 90,000 geezerhood former .
At that time , the area in the Nefud Desert where the bone was detect would have been semi - waterless grasslands surrounding a fresh water lake , a more hospitable clime than it is today . At some office during this era , the Red Sea between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula would have been low enough to make it essentially just a big river , so humans could have crossed there , as arelated articlein the diary by anthropologist Donald Henry mark .
Several scientist told Gizmodo that it ’s possible that the ivory is n’t human at all — it could belong to to a proportional ofHomo sapiens — and that the authors of the Modern field of study are overdraw the significance of their finding , so the depth psychology is fairly controversial .
However , other evidence has pointed to an earlier African going escort for homo . In 2015 , scientist in Chinadiscoveredhuman teeth they dated to 80,000 years ago , though they were n’t able to see the os immediately — or else , they analyzed the teeth ’s environs . In January 2018 , scientistsannouncedthat they had found a fond jawbone in an Israeli cave dating back at least 177,000 years .
" The power of these other the great unwashed to widely colonize this realm [ of Arabia ] casts doubt on long hold views that former dispersals out of Africa were localized and unsuccessful , " said lead author Huw Groucutt , of the University of Oxford and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History , in astatement .
[ h / tGizmodo ]
