The discovery of prehistoric fossils has changed ideas about the origin of mankind

Two fossils found in a cave in northern Laos suggest that our species Homo sapiens lived in the region about 86,000 years ago, according to a new study. This discovery challenges the prevailing idea that the path of people around the globe was linear and passed in a single wave about 50-60 thousand years ago, according to CNN.

“Most likely, this early migration was unfortunate, but this does not detract from the fact that Homo sapiens arrived in this region by this time, which is a remarkable achievement,” said study author Kyra Westaway, an assistant professor at Macquarie University in Australia.

DNA analysis of modern human populations has supported the hypothesis that early modern humans left Africa around 50,000-60,000 years ago, and archaeologists believe our early ancestors likely followed coastlines and islands across Southeast Asia to Australia.

However, the growing number of older human remains found in China and the Levant show that this chapter in human history is more complex than it first seemed.

The migration of 50,000-60,000 years ago, “which contributed to our current gene pool, may not have been the first,” Keira Westway emphasizes: “It is possible that there were earlier migrations that were not successful and, therefore, have not brought their genetics into our modern populations.”

Two Laotian fossils – a fragment of a leg bone and part of the front of the skull – were found in Tam Pa Ling cave. The archaeological site was discovered in 2009 when another partial skull was excavated.

In addition to the latest finds, two jawbones, a rib and a phalanx, were also found at the site, and all physical features of the remains suggest that they belonged to early modern humans.

Dating fossils from this site has proven difficult. They were found to be too old for radiocarbon dating, which only dates the remains up to 46,000 years ago. In addition, the human fossils found at this site are protected by Laos heritage laws that prevent any kind of destructive analysis.

Instead, the team involved in the study, which was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, used two different methods to estimate the age of the fossils.

The researchers measured the luminosity of quartz and feldspar minerals in a layer of sediment, a method that shows how long it has been since material with crystalline minerals was heated or exposed to sunlight, CNN says.

As the excavation deepened, the scientists also discovered two animal teeth in the same layer as the human remains, and dated them by measuring the radioactive decay of isotopes of uranium—chemical elements found in tooth enamel—using a technique called electron spin resonance dating.

The two fossils are estimated to be 68,000-86,000 years old, with a leg bone fragment being the oldest find.

In addition to casting doubt on the chronology of early human migration, the site also challenges the conventional wisdom that the earliest human journeys through the region involved circumnavigating coastlines and islands such as Sumatra, the Philippines and Borneo.

The high mountain region in the heart of mainland Southeast Asia was and still is densely forested, at an altitude of about 1100 meters and at least 300 kilometers from the sea.

“The most fascinating part of this exploration is the location of the cave. We know that hominins tended to move inland along river valleys, but this location confirms our suspicions that early Homo sapiens had the ability to adapt and spread through mountain woodlands much sooner than expected,” explains Keira Westway.

Archaeologists believe the cave has been inhabited for nearly 50,000 years, and recent discoveries highlight the region’s exciting potential for paleoanthropology.

In a nearby site known as Cobra Cave, a tooth was found believed to be that of a Denisovan, “an elusive ancient man,” CNN notes. However, this tooth is 70,000 years older than Tam Pa Ling’s earliest remains, so there is no evidence that the two species mixed or coexisted at the site, Westway says.

The world’s oldest piece of figurative rock art has been found in caves in Indonesia, and extinct human species, including small Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis, have been discovered on the islands of Indonesia and the Philippines.

The team hopes to unearth more human fossils in the region.

“This region is the perfect place to ask some of these questions about migration, as mainland Southeast Asia really sits at the crossroads of East Asia and insular Southeast Asia/Australia,” says senior study author Fabrice Demeter, Associate Professor at the Center geogenetics of the Lundbeck Foundation in Copenhagen. “Places like Tam Pa Ling, where there is a continuous, undisturbed stratigraphy (layers of sediments) that contains many fossils over a long period of time, will teach us a lot about past migrations and how early modern humans and other hominins changed over time.” time.”