For decades, the consensus scientific opinion has held that anatomically modern humans first migrated out of Africa about 60,000 years ago, heading north into the eastern Mediterranean region and then on to Europe and Asia.
But new research released Thursday paints a different picture. Similarly identifiable humans left Africa as early as 125,000 years ago, it says, and wandered east into the Arabian peninsula, parts of which were then wet and lush.
From there, the researchers report in a paper in the journal Science, the people who might well have been our true ancestors headed north and on into Eurasia.
Hans-Peter Uerpmann, of Germany’s University of Tubingin, said the chiseled stone tools found by his team at Jebel Faya in the United Arab Emirates were similar to those made at roughly the same time by early humans in East Africa.
The early dating was made with new light-based technology that the research team said yields more precise results than in the past.
“These were our ancestors,” Uerpmann said in a teleconference. “I don’t see there’s doubt about that.”
The Washington Post
