The remains indicate that the dispersal of Homo sapiens from Africa began much earlier than was thought.
Researchers from a large international group - 32 people from Europe, the United States and China - determined the age of human remains, which were discovered in 2007 during excavations in Israel - in the local Misliya Cave, located at the foot of Mount Carmel. Then they dug in a fragment of the skull and part of the upper jaw with teeth. Scientists had no doubt that the bones belonged to Homo sapiens - a representative of our - human - species. But they argued about the age, it was believed that the remains were no more than 160 thousand years old. Which is also a lot. And now the age is determined precisely - in three different laboratories with three different high-tech methods, which gave similar results.
The cave in which the oldest jaw of Homo sapiens was poured.
The cave is not very far from the seashore.
According to one of the authors of the study, Rolf Quam from Binghamton University (Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University), jaws with teeth from an Israeli cave are from 177 thousand to 194 thousand years old - that is, almost 200 thousand. The bones of Homo sapiens have not yet been found outside Africa.
The jaw of a record age forces us to reconsider the established ideas about the time of the exodus of our distant ancestors from the ancestral home - from Africa. It was believed that they appeared there from 200 to 400 thousand years ago. And they stretched from there about 100 thousand years ago - this was evidenced by the remains of modern people and the tools of their labor, which had come across before outside the African continent.
On the other hand, comparative DNA analysis showed that migration began 220 thousand years ago.
The discrepancy was embarrassing. But now he's gone.
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Scientists believe that several families of "settlers" lived in the Mislia cave for a long time. It is possible that they were the first to get out of Africa. Or among the first. And they settled on the territory of present-day Israel, the land of which became the promised land almost 200 thousand years ago - long before the biblical events.
Several families of our distant ancestors settled in the Mislia cave. The jaw of one of them was found almost 200 thousand years later.
Not only Homo sapiens migrated from Africa, but also Neanderthals - people of a different species.
BTW
That was a long time ago
A study of the DNA of the recently deceased Albert Perry, a Negro who lived in the American state of South Carolina, revealed that his family is one of the oldest on Earth. Perhaps even the most ancient. This, according to Michael Hammer, a geneticist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, is indicated by the Y chromosome of the descendant of the “forerunners”.
The ancestor, from whom Albert Perry descends, lived about 338 thousand years ago.
Hammer analyzed more than 6,000 DNA samples collected from African blacks. And found among them 11 more carriers of ancient Y-chromosomes. They lived in Cameroon, in the same village. It turned out that the case with Perry was by no means a mistake in the analyzes: Homo sapiens really appeared in Africa and a very long time ago.
VLADIMIR LAGOVSKY