|
|
Article: An earlier dawn for modern humans? (thermoluminescence dating shows humans were living in Middle East around 92,000 years ago)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- February 27, 1988
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1988 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
An earlier dawn for modern humans?
Burnt flints from a cave in Israel have yielded evidence that anatomically modern humans were living in the Middle East around 92,000 years ago, about 50,000 years earlier than most previous estimates, according to a team of French and Israeli scientists.
The new date suggests that a primitive form of modern humans inhabited southwest Asia before the Neanderthals, whose remains in the same region date to approximately 60,000 years ago, say Helene Valladas of the National Research Center in Gif sur Yvette, France, and her colleagues. This supports the notion that modern Homo sapiens originated in Africa and colonized the ...