The remains of some of the earliest modern humans to enter Asia have been discovered in a Laos cave, according to a study published Tuesday.
Excavations in the Tam Pa Ling cave over the past seven years revealed bone fragments belonging to early modern humans who inhabited the region some 86,000 years ago, and may have lived in the mountainous area for at least 68,000 years, according to Nature. The discovery pushes back the previous timeline on the exploration of humans, as these remains may be from some of the first humans to enter southeast Asia after leaving Africa.
“I can’t overestimate the importance of having another point on our map for early modern humans in southeast Asia,” anthropological archaeologist Miriam Stark, who did not work on the study, told Nature. “Understanding southeast Asia is critical to understanding the world’s deep history.”
1.2 million year old hand ax “factory” found in Africa. Shit just keeps getting older and somewhere out there, Graham Hancock is smiling.https://t.co/qQbsElZaq9
— Jazz Shaw (@JazzShaw) January 26, 2023
A small piece of skull and a shin bone fragment were uncovered in the cave, and are believed to have been deposited during a flood event. Through analysis of herbivore teeth, electron spin resonance and uranium-series dating, the researchers compared the fragments to others found nearly a decade ago in the cave, and found them to be almost twice as old. (RELATED: Archeologists’ Findings Prove We Need To Rewrite Human History)
The bones also challenge the human migration hypothesis that homo sapiens left Africa and dispersed across the planet in a single rapid event, called the Marine Isotope Stage 5, Nature noted. This time period lasted from 130,000 to 80,000-years-ago, but the discoveries in Tam Pa Ling don’t align with these theories. These humans apparently left wherever they were well before the Marine Isotope Stage 5 occurred.
The shape of the fossilized remains are also throwing a wrench in our historical understanding of early modern humans. The younger skull fragment, for example, has characteristics of both modern and archaic humans, whereas those dated to around 86,000-years-ago only have modern human characteristics.