Yet again , the history of the human folk has been rewritten .
A new study has found thatHomo erectus , one of the oldest human ancestor discover outside of Africa , perhaps did n’t reach Southeast Asia until much more recently than antecedently think .
report in the journalScience , investigator argue thatHomo erectusarrived in Java 1.3 to 1.5 million years ago , virtually 300,000 years afterwards thanpreviously trust . Importantly , this dating facilitate todispel the controversial notionthatHomo erectusoriginated in Asia . Although just a matter of a few hundred thousand years , this dating reaffirms thatHomo erectusevolved in Africa .
At the archaeological internet site of Sangiran in Java , researcher have antecedently find 100 hominin fossils , belong to at least three dissimilar species . Among those are a gang ofHomo erectusfossils that are think to be the onetime hominin fossils in Southeast Asia .
Homo erectus , which means " erect piece , " are the direct ancestors of several human species , including Neanderthals , Denisovans , and modern human being . Their arrival , sometime around 2 million years ago , marked the beginning of a bigger , faster , andsmarterhominin lineage . They are also the longest - lived of all human species . It ’s uncertain why they go extinct , but we know they roamed Earth for almost 2 million years right up until around 120,000 long time ago .
The date ofHomo erectus’arrival on the island of Java is of import as it helps to nibble together the complex puzzle of other hominin migration out of Africa and across Eurasia . However , putting a date on the reaching to Sangiran has proved controversial , not least because of the area ’s complex volcanic geology .
For this new study , a team of Japanese anthropologist studied the volcanic material found below and within the layers where the hominin rest were discovered . depth psychology of this deposit evoke that hominins arrived at the arena much earlier than thought , most probable around 1.3 million class ago and no earlier than 1.5 million years ago . This means thatHomo erectus’dispersal across Asia make a good deal longer than antecedently take over .
Just last calendar month , another piece of theHomo erectuspuzzle was discovered when a field find the eld of the last known settlement of the species . Using a set of ivory unearthed in the 1930s , the researchers fence thatthe last settlement of this specieswas at Ngandong , a site on the Indonesian island of Java , between 108,000 and 117,000 old age ago , long after the reaching of innovative humans to the area .
