Archaic people left Africa more than 2.12 million years ago - much earlier than scientists believed. This is the conclusion reached by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzhou, who discovered ancient stone tools at the Shanchen excavation site in Central China. The article of scientists was published in the journal Nature. This is reported by ScienceNews.
Anthropologists have discovered and recovered 96 artifacts from a layer of sedimentary rocks in the mountainous regions of China (southern part of the Loess Plateau). The finds included chunks of stones with pointed edges or sharp points, as well as flat stones that were used for processing tools. To find out the age of the tools, scientists used methods of paleomagnetic dating, which consists in measuring the remanent magnetization of rocks, which can be used to determine the strength and direction of the Earth's magnetic field at different periods of time.
Until now, the oldest evidence of the existence of hominids outside of Africa was believed to be the remains of an archanthropus found in Dmanisi (Georgia). The fossils belonging to Homo erectus were 1.77-1.85 million years old. No fossil remains have yet been found in Shancheng, so researchers find it difficult to answer whether the ancient stone tools were really created by erectus or whether they were made by another type of archaic people.
