Fossil teeth place humans in Asia '20,000 years early'

[JSCh]

Fossil teeth place humans in Asia '20,000 years early'
14 October 2015
By Paul Rincon Science editor, BBC News website

Image copyright S Xing, X-J Wu ​

Fossil finds from China have shaken up the traditional narrative of humankind's dispersal from Africa.

Scientists working in Daoxian, south China, have discovered teeth belonging to modern humans that date to at least 80,000 years ago.

This is 20,000 years earlier than the widely accepted "Out of Africa" migration that led to the successful peopling of the globe by our species.

Details of the work are outlined in the journal Nature.

We need to re-think our models. Maybe there was more than one Out of Africa migration
Dr María Martinón-Torres, UCL
​

Several lines of evidence - including genetics and archaeology - support a dispersal of our species from Africa 60,000 years ago.

Early modern humans living in the horn of Africa are thought to have crossed the Red Sea via the Bab el Mandeb straits, taking advantage of low water levels.

All non-African people alive today are thought to derive from this diaspora.

Now, excavations at Fuyan Cave in Daoxian have unearthed a trove of 47 human teeth.

'Game-changer'
"It was very clear to us that these teeth belonged to modern humans [from their morphology]. What was a surprise was the date," Dr María Martinón-Torres, from University College London (UCL), told BBC News.

"All the fossils have been sealed in a calcitic floor, which is like a gravestone, sealing them off. So the teeth have to be older than that layer. Above that are stalagmites that have been dated using uranium series to 80,000 years.

This means that everything below those stalagmites must be older than 80,000 years old; the human teeth could be as old as 125,000 years, according to the researchers.

In addition, the animal fossils found with the human teeth are typical of the Late Pleistocene - the same period indicated by the radioactive dating evidence.

Some fossils of modern humans that predate the Out of Africa migration are already known, from the Skhul and Qafzeh caves in Israel. But these have been regarded as part of a failed early dispersal of modern humans who probably went extinct.

However, the discovery of unequivocally modern fossils in China clouds the picture.

"Some researchers have proposed earlier dispersals in the past," said Dr Martinón-Torres.

"We really have to understand the fate of this migration. We need to find out whether it failed and they went extinct or they really did contribute to later people.

"Maybe we really are descendents of the dispersal 60,000 years ago - but we need to re-think our models. Maybe there was more than one Out of Africa migration."

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.

"Many workers (often including me) have argued that the early dispersal of modern humans from Africa into the Levant recorded by the fossils from Skhul and Qafzeh at about 120,000 years ago was essentially a failed dispersal which went little or no further than Israel."

"However, the large sample of teeth from Daoxian seem unquestionably modern in their size and morphology, and they look to be well-dated by uranium-thorium methods to at least 80,000 years. At first sight this seems to be consistent with an early dispersal across southern Asia by a population resembling those known from Skhul and Qafzeh.

"But the Daoxian fossils resemble recent human teeth much more than they look like those from Skhul and Qafzeh, which retain more primitive traits. So either there must have been rapid evolution of the dentitions of a Skhul-Qafzeh type population in Asia by about 80,000 years, or the Daoxian teeth represent a hitherto-unsuspected early and separate dispersal of more modern-looking humans."

Dr Martinón-Torres said the study could also shed light on why it took Homo sapiens another 40,000 years to settle Europe.

Perhaps the presence of the Neanderthals kept our species out of westernmost Eurasia until our evolutionary cousins started to dwindle in number. However, it's also possible that modern humans - who started out as a tropical species - were not as well-conditioned as the Neanderthals for the icy climate in Europe.

She noted that while modern humans occupied the warmer south of China 80,000 years ago, the colder regions of central and northern China appear to be settled by more primitive human groups who may have been Asian relatives of the Neanderthals.

Fossil teeth place humans in Asia '20,000 years early' - BBC News

 

[cirr]

The article leaves one with the impression that this discovery was the result of work done by western scientists。

 

[mpk1988]

Save your indignation please. If you want to believe the out-of-africa model despite the ideological contortions and adjustments that its proponents must resort in order to accommodate contradictory empirical evidence, you're welcome to do so.

I don't actually regard the out-of-africa concept full-proof myself.

It's the " we don't share any common heritage with the rest of Humanity and descended from dragon" part that made me go Wow.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Every human on Earth that has undergone DNA testing shows the same genetic markers that indicate an origin in Africa at some point. With "Mitochondrial Eve" (a woman who lived in East Africa) as a common ancestor.

So the theory still stands, just the date seems to be wrong.

 

[JSCh]

When I post the BBC article and reading thru', it never occur to me that none of the Chinese researcher name were mentioned, that might (as someone has already point out) lead to an impression that this is a western research effort taking place in China.

So to correct that, below is the China Daily news and then the Nature magazine's article preview link with a list of authors.

Scientists sink teeth into history of humans in Asia
China Daily, October 15, 2015

Some of the 47 human teeth discovered in a cave in Hunan province. [Photo/China Daily]​

The discovery of 47 human teeth in a cave in Hunan province by Chinese scientists has unearthed new evidence that the earliest modern humans lived in East Asia.

The teeth and a number of animal fossils were excavated from Fuyan Cave in Daoxian county.

After geological dating tests and analysis, the scientists determined that the teeth belonged to Homo sapiens, the species of modern humans that lived between 80,000 and 120,000 years ago.

The discovery of the teeth, made between 2011 and 2013, has just been reported in the online version of the scientific journal Nature.

Nick Campbell, the journal's executive editor, said, "The human teeth from China ... open up a new window on an area we had little information on before.

"These fossils ... are approximately double or more the age of any previous well dated, well preserved human fossils from southern Asia."

The first appearance of humans in the eastern Mediterranean and East Asia has remained a mystery due to lack of fossil evidence.

Human fossils found earlier in Beijing's Tianyuan Cave, Huanglong Cave in Hubei province and Zhiren Cave in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region narrowed this down to between 11,000 and 40,000 years ago, but none of these species evolved fully into modern humans.

Liu Wu from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and lead author of the paper in Nature, said, "This is a milestone discovery because the species we found in the Fuyuan Cave is from well developed modern humans, almost identical to living humans.

"This means that we were present in southern China 30,000 to 70,000 years earlier than in the eastern Mediterranean and Europe."

Campbell, from Nature, said, "The findings really do substantially change our understanding of how modern humans established themselves in Asia.

"The findings may have some intriguing implications for the ever-evolving story of how modern humans replaced Neanderthals."

Neanderthals were closely related to modern humans and lived between 24,000 and 130,000 years ago.

They were smaller than modern humans and had low, flat elongated skulls.

Maria Martinon-Torres from University College London, a co-author of the paper, said, "Now we know that modern humans were present in southern China as early as 80,000 years ago, but there is no evidence that our species entered Europe before 45,000 years ago, when Neanderthals were already extinct."

Robin Dennell from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, said of the teeth discovery, "More revelations about our species' history can surely be expected from southern China."

*******
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature15696.html

The earliest unequivocally modern humans in southern China

• Wu Liu1, *
• María Martinón-Torres2, 3, 4, *
• Yan-jun Cai5,
• Song Xing1,
• Hao-wen Tong1,
• Shu-wen Pei1,
• Mark Jan Sier4, 6, 7,
• Xiao-hong Wu8,
• R. Lawrence Edwards9,
• Hai Cheng10,
• Yi-yuan Li11,
• Xiong-xin Yang12,
• José María Bermúdez de Castro2, 4,
• Xiu-jie Wu1, *

• Affiliations
• Contributions
• Corresponding authors

Nature (2015)
doi:10.1038/nature15696

Received 09 May 2015
Accepted 09 September 2015
Published online 14 October 2015

 

[Aepsilons]

"The Imperial Family is the fountain source of Japanese nation, and national and private life issue from this. The way of the subject is to be loyal to the Emperor in disregard of self, thereby supporting the Imperial Throne coexistensive with the Heavens and the Earth."


.

There is no dispute here, tho. The Imperial Family is the fountain from which all Japan had sprouted forth from. The Imperial Family, centered on the Emperor himself, is the very ideation, the very epitome of Japan, the Japanese State, and the coexistence of Heavenly and Earthly reality in context to Japan.

There is no Japan without the Emperor; there is no Emperor without Japan. Thus the Emperor is the very representation of over 128 million Japanese and the Empire (State) of Japan.

It is not withstanding that the Imperial Institution is over 2600 years old, as old as the Empire itself.

Japanese are descendants from Qin empire. They were losers who were afraid of being beheaded so they sailed East and hit Nippon island. They mated with the negritos.

On a relatavistic and theological visage, however, the first Emperor of Japan --- The Great Jimmu --- came forth from the Sun Goddess , Amaterasu Omikami.

 

[Cossack25A1]

LOL, you freaks twist everything. Descendants of the dragon mean descendants from the emperor. Chinese civilization was descended from the Yellow Emperor.

Nothing to do with third reich BS.

It's not about similarities with the Third Reich, rather you espouse the same supremacist rhetoric against other people. Maybe you're the one who is twisting things, saying you Chinese people are above everyone else. Hell, I will not be surprised if you support the notion that Chinese shall rule everyone and lesser races should be in servitude to the Chinese.

 

[Jlaw]

It's not about similarities with the Third Reich, rather you espouse the same supremacist rhetoric against other people. Maybe you're the one who is twisting things, saying you Chinese people are above everyone else.

Good try but I didn't say that. You are twisting words again.

 

[Cossack25A1]

Good try but I didn't say that. You are twisting words again.

It may not be you, but your comrades here surely shows it; from dropping derogatory terms to outright support in killing "enemies of China".

 

[Aepsilons]

@Cossack25A1 @Indos @MarveL

Superior? Bro you are Austronesian Race, far older than even Japanese and Han Chinese!

Even before the Han people sprouted, your ancestors were already colonizing the great Malayo Archipelago and beyond. Charting the heavens and using the stars to navigate throughout the Pacific And Indian Oceans.

Mind you thousands of years before the creation of the "compass" that the Chinese claim to have "invented "

Your Race --- Austronesian ---'is ancient....even before Egyptians were building pyramids, your ancestors were navigating the great Pacific.......

It's not about similarities with the Third Reich, rather you espouse the same supremacist rhetoric against other people. Maybe you're the one who is twisting things, saying you Chinese people are above everyone else. Hell, I will not be surprised if you support the notion that Chinese shall rule everyone and lesser races should be in servitude to the Chinese.

Nah , won't happen. Will never happen.

 

[Cossack25A1]

@Cossack25A1 @Indos @MarveL

Superior? Bro you are Austronesian Race, far older than even Japanese and Han Chinese!

Even before the Han people sprouted, your ancestors were already colonizing the great Malayo Archipelago and beyond. Charting the heavens and using the stars to navigate throughout the Pacific And Indian Oceans.

Mind you thousands of years before the creation of the "compass" that the Chinese claim to have "invented "

Your Race --- Austronesian ---'is ancient....even before Egyptians were building pyramids, your ancestors were navigating the great Pacific.......

That I didn't know.

 

[Aepsilons]

That I didn't know.

I've researched , studied extensively on Austronesian anthropology in my grad school days. Still somewhat remember some things, I suppose.

It's not about similarities with the Third Reich, rather you espouse the same supremacist rhetoric against other people. Maybe you're the one who is twisting things, saying you Chinese people are above everyone else. Hell, I will not be surprised if you support the notion that Chinese shall rule everyone and lesser races should be in servitude to the Chinese.

The Chinese have never been the type to "exterminate " they're a hardy stock, but mostly an agrarian and trade based society. They never were the type to wipe out anything; if anything they are good at growing their society, prospering and assimilating with near societies.

The radical extremists in PDF don't represent the real Chinese. Most of the trolls here are reconstituted , and are ABCs or CBCs.

 

[chauism]

Japanese are descendants from Qin empire. They were losers who were afraid of being beheaded so they sailed East and hit Nippon island. They mated with the negritos.

Stop those stupid comments, Japan's recorded history is much longer than Qin dynasty is. Those comments only put a dent on your own credibility.

 

[Aepsilons]

Stop those stupid comments, Japan's recorded history is much longer than Qin dynasty is. Those comments only put a dent on your own credibility.

He was probably referring to the Yayoi Jidai; the recent colonizers of Japan were of north sinids from present day Zhejiang and Jiangsu. The Yayoi Japanese have similar facial structure as northern Han as well as even Mongolic Koreanic. Japanese share the "Mongolian" birth spots , I suppose , with other Northern Asian groups.

However, modern Japanese are fusion of pre-Yayoi stock with Yayoi north sinid.

The Jomon, the aboriginal Japanese have lived in the Japanese archipelago for close to 9000 years. They have some similar mitochondrial DNA as dravidians and other South Asian ethnics . They to Japan about 9-10,000 years ago through the Tibetal plateu, and into the island's through a land bridge.

Stop those stupid comments, Japan's recorded history is much longer than Qin dynasty is. Those comments only put a dent on your own credibility.

Even before Qin Shi Huangdi unified China, there was already a Tenno in Japan. I suppose our island being smaller, we were able to form a national identity sooner than them. Tho must state the Chinese Han and Tang dynasties did heavily influence Japanese court culture and the arts. They were very creative, the Han. I suppose one of their positive traits and attributes.

 

[Aepsilons]

No joke, Japan and Japanese is totally a freak oddball, no matter gene, culture, spirit, everything.

The word freak is inaccurate. I prefer "unique".

We are a hardy bunch. One has to especially if one is living in a barren and resource poor group of islands. The weak will die off to make room for the strong. We have been fighting and killing each lord for power for thousands of years, so our brutal and warrior mentality is ingrained.

Japan did not rise to power and dared to invade larger powers by being weak and reticent. One must gamble to win .

No joke, Japan and Japanese is totally a freak oddball, no matter gene, culture, spirit, everything.

We were not blessed as China with rich natural resources ; hence we had to work harder , compete harder and even adopt brutal policies to succeed.

No joke, Japan and Japanese is totally a freak oddball, no matter gene, culture, spirit, everything.

Lastly there is no such thing as "freak gene". Geez take a basic molecular biology class.