Could this ancient jawbone rewrite the history books?

A FOSSIL found in a cave in Israel has prompted scientists to question theories about how the earliest humans came to populate the planet.

The prehistoric jawbone, pictured, is the oldest human fossil to be found outside Africa and suggests our ancestors left the continent up to 100,000 years earlier than previously thought.

It had been suggested that modern humans first migrated from Africa into Eurasia 100,000 years ago but the jawbone is said to be between 177,000 and 194,000 years old.

Professor Israel Hershkovitz, who led the work at Tel Aviv University, said the discovery ‘ completely changes our view on modern human dispersal and the history of modern human evolution’.

The jawbone, believed to have been that of a young adult, was found at Misliya Cave on Mount Carmel, a coastal mountain range in Israel.

The find could force researchers into rethinking how we evolved and interacted with our now-extinct ancestors such as Neanderthals.

The discovery, analysed in the journal Science, suggests that modern humans were interacting, and possibly mating, with other human species for tens of thousands of years.