2023-06-14 06:29:23
The presence of early modern humans (also known as A wise man) in Southeast Asia has been pushed back in time once once more, with the discovery in Laos of a frontal bone fragment dated to at least 68,000 years ago and a tibia around 77,000 years old – and potentially over 86,000 years old, if we consider bovine tooth dating carried out in the same geological strata. These findings were published on June 13 in the journal Nature Communications by an international team led by Fabrice Demeter (University of Copenhagen, Musée de L’Homme, Paris).
These fossils, found at Tam Pà Ling, “the monkeys’ cave,” join a series of A wise man bones and teeth found at Chinese sites that are over 100,000 years old, although some of the dating is disputed. They indicate that our species may have ventured far to the east of its African cradle multiple times and well before the departure from Africa, that would enable it to conquer the planet for good.
“Taken together, these findings suggest a more complex pattern of dispersal that is hard to reconcile with current genetic evidence unless these early dispersals represent unsuccessful colonizations,” according to the article. Indeed, genetic analyses suggest that the entire current human population outside Africa descends from a human group that only left Africa regarding 60,000 years ago – and which may have hybridized with various cousins along the way.
An ‘ideal fossil trap’
Demeter has been taking part in expeditions to Laos for some 20 years. The Tam Pà Ling cave, which is difficult to access, was identified in 2009 by his team’s geologist. It has a large entrance and a sloping floor, which, in this monsoon-prone region, makes it an “ideal fossil trap,” according to the researcher: No fewer than 7 meters of sediment have accumulated here over the last 90,000 years. A first skull fragment was discovered here back in 2010, and over the years, as paleontologists have dug deeper and deeper, they have continued to go back in time, uncovering human bones ranging from 46,000 to 70,000 years old – and now, over 80,000 years old.
Excavations have now reached the floor of the cave, that is, its oldest point, but paleontologists plan to extend the dig horizontally. “We still have 15 to 20 years’ work ahead of us,” said Demeter, who added that some Hmong villagers have been trained and are now “expert diggers.” Since the clay is very wet, it cannot be sieved, so it has to be kneaded by hand to extract fossils and artifacts: “We cut up the clay. There is no other way.”
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