Fossil rewrites man out of Africa narrative
LOS ANGELES: A finger bone from an unexpected place and time has upended the story of human migration out of Africa.
It’s only 3cm long and less than 1cm wide, but it has the potential to rewrite the history of our ancestors’ migration out of Africa.
The object in question is a fossilised piece of a bone, probably the middle portion of a middle finger. Based on its shape, scientists believe that it belonged to a member of the Homo sapiens species.
Two things make it unusually significant.
First, uranium series dating techniques indicate that the bone is between 85,000 and 90,000 years old.
Second, it was found in Al Wusta, a site in Saudi Arabia’s Nefud desert that’s hundreds of miles from the nearest coastline.
Those factors stand in sharp contrast to the traditional ‘‘out of Africa’’ narrative of human migration. Based on both archaeological evidence and genetic analysis, this theory posits that modern humans left their home continent about 60,000 years ago and stayed near the coasts as they spread out across the world.
Scientists have found what appear to be Homo sapiens teeth in Chinese caves suggesting humans arrived much earlier. The Al Wusta finger bone marks the first time scientists have tested the age of a human fossil far beyond Africa and found it to be well older than 60,000 years. —