Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Ancient human unearthed in China

The remains of one of the earliest modern humans to inhabit eastern Asia have been unearthed in a cave in China. The find could shed light on how our ancestors colonised the East, a movement that is only poorly understood by anthropologists. Researchers found 34 bone fragments belonging to a single individual at the Tianyuan Cave, near Beijing. Details of the discovery appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. Radiocarbon dates, obtained directly from the bones, show the person lived between 42,000 and 39,000 years ago. For the full article: Click Here .

Nice find, Dan. Thanks for sharing.

It appears that footwear was already in use, judging by a foot bone, they say. I wonder what else they wore. Is the traditional animal skin tunic a later or earlier invention?

Seems Professor Erik Trinkaus and I are the only two who accept interbreeding between ancient and modern humans. Ancient human genes may have died out since of course. Obviously Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA lines have died out but that doesn't necessarily mean all ancient human genes have. Some of the present regional variation may not be simply a result of more recent evolution.

Amaranth. Why am I not surprised you are interested in footwear? I'd say sewn skin tunics developed about the time humans were able to move north of 50 degrees, perhaps 30,000 years ago.

I also accept that there was interbreeding, Terrynewzealand.
When Homo Sapiens 'came out of Africa' presumably they left behind the 1.5+ million year old Homo erectus, and the later Neanderthals.
Interbreeding has been proven to have occured between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals, especially in Europe.
Now it remains to be seen if the same can have happened between ourselves and other (different) ancient peoples that populated East Asia, at the "out of Africa time"

Neanderthals were very artistic, and often cooked their food, - cave remains support this.
Clothes and footware would have been in use in Europe 100,000years ago.
As for Shoes or Sandals, Louis Leaky stated on the basis of very ancient artifacts found within rock matrix at Olduvai Gorge, namely drilled sharks teeth and cutting flint tools.
In fact Leaky considered that human development as being 40 million years in the past, rather than the accepted 4 or 5 million years accepted today.
'Lucy' born about 3.5-4.0 million years ago, and walked upright seems to confirm his thoughts.
A number of artifacts found in Utah and in Pennsylvanian coal mines, although photographed, and I believe a shoe or sandal showing stitching was one of those. They were invariably called fraudelent by the very religious fraternitys of those times.

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"You will never find a real Human being - even in a mirror." .....Mike Kremer.
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Thanks Mike. Now there's three of us. You wrote:

'Now it remains to be seen if the same can have happened between ourselves and other (different) ancient peoples that populated East Asia, at the "out of Africa time"'.

I think the evidence for interbreeding in Southeast Asia is actually stronger than in Europe. Even many single origin supporters concede human fossils found in Australia at Kow Swamp show similarities to later SE Asian H. erectus, although their mtDNA is modern human. I found this view that sums up the argument:

http://www.canovan.com/HumanOrigin/kow/kowswamp.htm

Wow, lots of info, I,ll need time.

Mike Kremer