New Discovery in China Regarding Pre-Historic Human Migration

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**jasper76**

I find this stuff fascinating.

Teeth from China Reveal an Early Human Trek out of Africa
by Ewen Callaway and Nature Magazine
(http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/teeth-from-china-reveal-an-early-human-trek-out-of-africa1/

Teeth from a cave in south China show that Homo sapiens reached China around 100,000 years ago—a time at which most researchers had assumed that our species had not trekked far beyond Africa.

“This is stunning, it’s major league,” says Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford, UK who was not involved in the research. “It’s one of the most important finds coming out of Asia in the last decade.”

Limestone caves pockmark Daoxian County in Hunan Province, China. Recent excavations of a cave system there extending over 3 square kilometres discovered 47 human teeth, as well as the remains of hyenas, extinct giant pandas and dozens of other animal species. The researchers found no stone tools; it is likely that humans never lived in the cave and their remains were instead hauled in by predators.

The teeth are unquestionably those of H. sapiens, says María Martinón-Torres, a palaeoanthropologist at University College London who co-led the study with colleagues Wu Liu and Xie-jie Wu at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing. Their small size, thin roots and flat crowns are typical for anatomically modern humans—H. sapiens—and the overall shape of the teeth is barely distinguishable from those of both ancient and present-day humans. The team report their results in Nature today.

Determining the age of the teeth proved tricky. They contained no radioactive carbon (which has almost vanished after 50,000 years). So the team dated various calcite deposits in the cave and used the assortment of animal remains to deduce that the human teeth were probably between 80,000 and 120,000 years old.

Early trekkers
Those ages buck the conventional wisdom that H. sapiens from Africa began colonizing the world only around 50,000–60,000 years ago, says Martinón-Torres. Older traces of modern humans have been seen outside Africa, such as the roughly 100,000-year-old remains from the Skhul and Qafzeh Caves in Israel. But many researchers had argued that those remains were only evidence of unsuccessful efforts at wider migration.

“This demonstrates it was not a failed dispersal,” says Petraglia, who has long argued for an early expansion of modern humans through Asia on a southerly route. “This is a rock-solid case for having early humans—definitely Homo sapiens—at an early date in eastern Asia.” Chris Stringer, a palaeoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London who had argued that remains from Skhul and Qafzeh signified unsuccesful migrations, says that he is now swayed by the Daoxian teeth.

Without DNA from the teeth, it is impossible to determine the relationship between the Daoxian people and other humans, including present-day Asians. But Jean-Jacques Hublin, a palaeoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, thinks that later waves of humans replaced them. Other genetic evidence sugests that present-day East Asians descend from humans who interbred with Neanderthals in western Asia some 55,000–60,000 years ago, Hublin notes.

It is also not clear whymodern humans would have reached East Asia so long before they reached Europe, where the earliest remains are about 45,000 years old. Martinón-Torres suggests that humans could not gain a foothold in Europe until Neanderthals there were teetering on extinction. The frigid climate of Ice Age Europe may have erected another barrier to people adapted to Africa, says Petraglia.

Although Hublin says there is a good case that the Daoxian teeth are older than 80,000 years, he notes that several of the teeth have visible cavities, a feature uncommon in human teeth older than 50,000 years. “It could be that early modern humans had a peculiar diet in tropical Asia,” he says. “But I am pretty sure that this observation will raise some eyebrows." Martinon-Torres says her team plans to look more closely at the cavities and the diet of the Daoxian humans by examining patterns of tooth wear.

Southern China is filled with similar caves that may colour in more details of humans’ early exploits, such as the tools they made. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Petraglia says. “There’s a lot more work that needs to be done."

**DarkTraveler777**

Thanks for sharing, that is fascinating.

I suppose it does makes sense that people would go towards climates that were more familiar to the ones they were leaving (and weren't overrun with Neanderthals).

**Iron_Captain**

Oj... That is long ago!
I wonder what people were like back then.

**Smacks**

jasper76 wrote:
Teeth from China Reveal an Early Human Trek out of Africa

You have to be really careful with what to believe when it comes to this kind of stuff. There is quite a lot of racial politics involved on both sides of the "out of Africa" theory, it has become a very thorny issue.

Iron_Captain wrote:
Oj... That is long ago!
I wonder what people were like back then.

I imagine more than a handful were cannibals.

**jasper76**

Smacks wrote:
jasper76 wrote:
Teeth from China Reveal an Early Human Trek out of Africa

You have to be really careful with what to believe when it comes to this kind of stuff. There is quite a lot of racial politics involved on both sides of the "out of Africa" theory, it has become a very thorny issue.

I'm old enough to know that my beliefs are irrelevant to objective facts. Nothing in the article seemed politically motivated at all, and IME Scientific American and Nature are both reputable sources. Care to explain the disclaimer a little more?

**Smacks**

jasper76 wrote:
I'm old enough to know that my beliefs are irrelevant to objective facts. Nothing in the article seemed politically motivated at all, and IME Scientific American and Nature are both reputable sources. Care to explain the disclaimer a little more?

We have a Chinese team claiming that modern humans appear in China ~40,000 years before other researchers "assumed" modern humans had left Africa. And the DNA and radiocarbon data is missing.

I'm not saying it's outright BS, but they're making some quite extraordinary claims, based on not very much. It all makes my skepticism sense tingle.

**Kilkrazy**

Are you thinking it's some kind of attempt by the Chinese to establish a claim to be the originator of modern Homo Sapiens?

**kronk**

It was the *original Origin Theory

*Not counting Adam/Eve and other diving theories....

**jasper76**

Smacks wrote:
jasper76 wrote:
I'm old enough to know that my beliefs are irrelevant to objective facts. Nothing in the article seemed politically motivated at all, and IME Scientific American and Nature are both reputable sources. Care to explain the disclaimer a little more?
We have a Chinese team claiming that modern humans appear in China ~40,000 years before other researchers "assumed" modern humans had left Africa. And the DNA and radiocarbon data is missing.

I'm not saying it's outright BS, but they're making some quite extraordinary claims, based on not very much. It all makes my skepticism sense tingle.

I see what you're getting at. To be fair, it wasn't a purely Chinese research team, but rather according to the article the study was co-led by a anthropologist from University College London. I can't speak to whether their method of dating was valid personally, but as far as I know, studies don't get published in Nature without a peer review process.

For me personally, it wouldn't inform my politics one iota whether homo sapiens reached China 60,000 years ago or 100,000 years ago, nor would it matter one iota to me if the scientific consensus was that our common ancestors came from Africa, or China, or Europe, or Asia, or wherever.

**Smacks**

I actually think there are a lot of problems with the "out of Africa" theory myself. Modern human evolution appears to have been quite complicated, and may have involved lots of hominid populations (Neanderthals being an important example). So this stuff actually plays right into my own world view. However, when I've read into this before, I've noticed that a lot of the most vocal opponents of the out of Africa theory, are groups which I would call "nationalist" or just outright "racist", while the theory has been embraced by civil rights groups, who want to present a world where we are all the same. My concern is that amidst all this politics, the science is compromised. I find myself reluctant to trust anybody on these issues now.

**LordofHats**

A lot of opposition to the Out of Africa theory is racially motivated, but that's no reason to immediately question any information that could be construed as contrary (this find does nothing to even remotely debunk the Out of Africa Theory) as an automatic racial attack.

If you really don't want to mix politics with science, maybe don't be the first person to bring up politics in a thread about science?

**OneManNoodles**

Kilkrazy wrote:
Are you thinking it's some kind of attempt by the Chinese to establish a claim to be the originator of modern Homo Sapiens?

A few years ago there was a claim made by a Chinese study that they had evolved at least partly from a separate line of homo Erectus claiming they had evidence of "Chinese" facial features such as a flat face, high cheekbones, so they were racially (race == species) different, similar things have been used in the past for nationalistic

ing contests to claim we on this line in the sand are superior to them over there. Anyway, the features they mentioned are easily explained by sexual selection.

Past examples include a pigs tooth see "Piltdown man" drom 1912, so-called missing link that was used as evidence that humans evolved in the home counties of noble England, not those dastardly Germans.

@Smacks: Yes the out of Africa model does have kinks in it, the fossil record is not complete, alas our ancestors were not thoughtful enough to leave perfectly preserved records. But it did happen one way or the other, humans have a habit of moving around a lot in the past even more so when there were large climactic shifts.

The good folks at New Scientist have written a compendium that explains the current understanding of the science for anyone interested.

This new information sounds interesting, but it leaves a lot of questions ... hopefully these will not be pig teeth as well...

**Smacks**

LordofHats wrote:
If you really don't want to mix politics with science, maybe don't be the first person to bring up politics in a thread about science?

It is not my intention to mix politics with science. I just want to alert people who might not be aware, that this subject is already heavily mixed up with politics, and there are people, especially in Beijing, who have an agenda to push.

Whether it is being pushed here, I don't know. I trust you can make your own informed decision on that. It's just something to be aware of.

**Skinnereal**

There was a documentary in the last year about origin science in China.
I think it was Alice Robert or Richard Fortey (or one of that lot who do sciencey TV), and it covered this work.
It alluded to China wanting to claim the origin of mankind, and some of their scientists' results were being 'tweaked' or selectively presented based on the range.

**Kilkrazy**

The 'Out of Africa' theory is the currently accepted one based on the available evidence. The point of Science obviously is that when new evidence emerges, the theory gets broken or revised.

We'll have to wait for the provenance of these new fossils to be verified. The main issue would seem to be that it is a very much long way from Africa to China than to the Middle East or Europe.

**Ketara**

Smacks wrote:
LordofHats wrote:
If you really don't want to mix politics with science, maybe don't be the first person to bring up politics in a thread about science?
It is not my intention to mix politics with science. I just want to alert people who might not be aware, that this subject is already heavily mixed up with politics, and there are people, especially in Beijing, who have an agenda to push.

Whether it is being pushed here, I don't know. I trust you can make your own informed decision on that. It's just something to be aware of.

I'll be honest, it was the first thought I had when reading this article. There's been several pushes from the Chinese before (IIRC) to prove that the Chinese people came from a separate strand of humanity to the rest of us, with the implication that they were genetically superior to everyone else. If the former part of that turns out to be true, it would be biologically interesting, but I would fear what it would entail with regards to modern day perception of the latter part.

**LordofHats**

Isn't there a multi-origin theory positing that Humans arouse as a species simultaneously in multiple regions?

**Ketara**

LordofHats wrote:
Humans arouse as a species simultaneously in multiple regions?

I'm quite sure I wouldn't know anything about that.

**Frazzled**

LordofHats wrote:
Isn't there a multi-origin theory positing that Humans arouse as a species simultaneously in multiple regions?

Are you saying we were multiply aroused?

**LordofHats**

No that- Eh walked into that one...

**hotsauceman1**

Im more a proponent of the Kronk Theory of Origin.
That Kronk Time Traveled to give all the pre-human women his DNO to start out the specied.

**Alpharius**

His...DNO?

Dare we ask about "Kronk's DNO"?

**Peter Wiggin**

Iron_Captain wrote:
Oj... That is long ago!
I wonder what people were like back then.

Very smelly, would be my guess.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

LordofHats wrote:
Isn't there a multi-origin theory positing that Humans arouse as a species simultaneously in multiple regions?

The whole "everyone came from Africa" line is being replaced by "humans traveled out of africa and interbred/competed with other sapiens to form modern humanity" which has a lot of interesting logical extrapolations. The best illustration of this are the BBC articles about Neanderthal genetic code contained in modern humans, as well as the Eurasian hunter/Southern farmers bits.

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

There is clearly an 'out of Africa' stand to human evolution, with the species of Hominid we have most evolutionary links to originating there,

but when this ancestor left Africa is very much up from debate (probably several times prompted either by success and thus high populations that had to expand out of Africa, or harsh climatic conditions which prompted migrations in seach of better conditions elsewhere)

There are now at least 3 other hominids that interbred with these original ancestors,

the Neanderthals in Europe (2-4% DNA contribution to modern Europeans, good fossil record)

the Denisovians (1% DNA contribution to native populations around Siberia, known only from a few teeth & finger bones)

mystery species X (DNA contribution to African hunter gatherer populations around 50,000 years ago from an unknown species that diverged from 'modern humans about 700,000 years ago http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(12)00831-8?_returnURL=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867412008318%3Fshowall%3Dtrue )

I think it's pretty significant that Chris Stringer has accepted this latest paper as he's been very sceptical of other claims of early expansions from Africa (or rather expansion that actually set up new long term population)

I'm going to be interested to see what more appears

**Peter Wiggin**

OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
There is clearly an 'out of Africa' stand to human evolution, with the species of Hominid we have most evolutionary links to originating there,

but when this ancestor left Africa is very much up from debate (probably several times prompted either by success and thus high populations that had to expand out of Africa, or harsh climatic conditions which prompted migrations in seach of better conditions elsewhere)

There are now at least 3 other hominids that interbred with these original ancestors,

the Neanderthals in Europe (2-4% DNA contribution to modern Europeans, good fossil record)

the Denisovians (1% DNA contribution to native populations around Siberia, known only from a few teeth & finger bones)

mystery species X (DNA contribution to African hunter gatherer populations around 50,000 years ago from an unknown species that diverged from 'modern humans about 700,000 years ago http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(12)00831-8?_returnURL=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867412008318%3Fshowall%3Dtrue )

I think it's pretty significant that Chris Stringer has accepted this latest paper as he's been very sceptical of other claims of early expansions from Africa (or rather expansion that actually set up new long term population)

I'm going to be interested to see what more appears

Its very clear that not all branches of pre-modern, tool using, clan organized hominids came out of Africa and that modern homo sapiens are a result of these branches mixing and competing.

I mean we're still 65% genetically identical to a bananna, so y'know. Wevs.

**LordofHats**

Peter Wiggin wrote:

I mean we're still 65% genetically identical to a bananna, so y'know. Wevs.

But if I'm 65% banana, why do I have to eat other banana's for their juicy juicy potassium

**tau tse tung**

Belive it or not, my course had showed me this around a year ago, my classmates debunked it and laughed for days but now mainstream news is saying it I'm starting to belive! It would make sense in some ways and the chinese do have a very rich fossil record.

**Co'tor Shas**

LordofHats wrote:
Peter Wiggin wrote:

I mean we're still 65% genetically identical to a bananna, so y'know. Wevs.

But if I'm 65% banana, why do I have to eat other banana's for their juicy juicy potassium

Because your not allowed to eat other people. Simple really.

**Kilkrazy**

Actually you are allowed to eat other people; there are no laws against it specifically in a lot of countries, but there is such a strong cultural bias that anyone who does it gets the reputation of a dangerous weirdo.

Of course it's fairly difficult to get hold of human meat in a legitimate way, so many cases involve murder.

**LordofHats**

Kilkrazy wrote:
Actually you are allowed to eat other people; there are no laws against it specifically in a lot of countries, but there is such a strong cultural bias that anyone who does it gets the reputation of a dangerous weirdo.

Of course it's fairly difficult to get hold of human meat in a legitimate way, so many cases involve murder.

I'd posit most people who would eat other people (at least in a modern developed country) probably aren't exactly right in and head in the first place, so they've probably done something illegal