A discovery deep inside a cave in Laos shows humans voyaged out of Africa by at least 68,000 years ago.
and dated to between 70,000 and 46,000 years ago. Scientists have also identified stone tools in central India as humanmade and. But in each of these cases, other researchers have questioned the evidence.
Scientists, including archaeologists from the Laotian Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism, began excavating Tam Pà Ling in 2009. The cave wasn’t anybody’s permanent home. Every year, seasonal floods wash sediment and sometimes bones from the surface into its depths, building up a layered record. There, researchers in 2010 found most of askull and jawbone, which they dated by OSL to about 46,000 years old.
Based on these techniques, the researchers concluded the human frontal bone and tibia were buried in Tam Pà Ling sometime between 86,000 and 68,000 years ago. Because genetic evidence suggests that all living non-Africans left that continent later, the bones must represent a population that ventured out from Africa in an earlier wave and didn’t leave their genetic mark in living people.
No tools have been found at the site, Shackelford adds, possibly because people here crafted implements with readily available bamboo, which decays over time, rather than stone.
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