“Our discovery, together with other research findings, suggests southern China should be the key, central area for the emergence and evolution of modern humans in East Asia”, the study’s co-lead author, Wu Liu, of China’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, told Live Science.
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In a report by China Daily, evidence in the form of 47 human teeth found in Hunan Province suggests that the earliest modern humans, also known as the species Homo sapiens, lived in East Asia. However, the team of scientists who discovered the fossil teeth believe that humans left Africa and trekked into China between 80,000 and 120,000 years ago. “Above that are stalagmites that have been dated using uranium series to 80,000 years”. “It’s one of the most important finds coming out of Asia in the last decade”. Maybe there’s not only one (migration) out of Africa, (maybe) there are several out of Africa.
Animal bones and fossils were discovered among the human remains and tests also shows that they are as old as the teeth. “It could be that early modern humans had a peculiar diet in tropical Asia”, he told Nature.
“The findings may have a few intriguing implications for the ever-evolving story of how modern humans replaced Neanderthals”.
For now, the scientific community is enthusiastic about the find, with the caveat that the date of the fossilized teeth needs to be verified.
In any case, it’s unlikely that the teeth came from ancestors of modern Asians, as DNA testing suggests that those groups stem from humans who came to Asia by way of Europe, picking up a few Neanderthal DNA along the way.
The teeth were found from the Fuyan Cave site in Hunan Province’s Daoxian County.
That’s a pretty big difference between the two populations, and it could hint that our relatives the Neanderthals could have been the reason that Homo sapiens failed to break into the continent on their apparent first try.
The human teeth found in the caves in China may indicate that at least one such earlier migration attempt proved successful.
More research is needed to answer the first question, but researchers say it makes sense that the first modern humans first went east. Born of the tropics roughly 160,000 years ago, Homo sapiens were likely deterred by colder temperatures in their earliest movements.
Prof Chris Stringer, from London’s Natural History Museum said the new study was “a game-changer” in the debate about the spread of modern humans. “But I am pretty sure that this observation will raise a few eyebrows”.
“But the Daoxian fossils resemble recent human teeth much more than they look like those from Skhul and Qafzeh, which retain more primitive traits”.
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“This is just the tip of the iceberg”, says Petraglia.
