French find puts humans in Europe 200,000 years earlier

[Adsos Letter]

Source: PhysOrg.com

Experts on prehistoric man are rethinking their dates after a find in a southern French valley suggested our ancestors may have reached Europe 1.57 million years ago: 200,000 years earlier than we thought.

What provoked the recount was a pile of fossilised bones and teeth uncovered 15 years ago by local man Jean Rouvier in a basalt quarry at Lezignan la Cebe, in the Herault valley, Languedoc.

In the summer of 2008, Rouvier mentioned his find to Jerome Ivorra, an archaeological researcher at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

The subsequent dig uncovered a large variety of ancient animal bones: cattle, deer, horses and also of carnivorous animals related to cats and dogs.

http://www.physorg.com/news180110953.html

[gratuitous]

1. That's not going to make the creationists happy

If the earth's only 6,000 years old, evidence of human habitation from 1.57 million years ago will pose a bit of a problem. Oh wait, I almost forgot their all-purpose, untrumpable bit of evidence: God did it. That God's such a prankster! Making it look like things are older than 6,000 years, just to fake out all those "scientists" with their fancy-schmancy "method." So much easier to just say "God did it," and that ends the whole problem. The rest of the day belongs to you!

[laconicsax]

2. Umm...

Homo Sapiens wasn't around 1.5 million years ago. H. Erectus was, but H. Sapiens didn't come around for another million years.

It is neat that this article is labeling hominids as human, but human tends to refer specifically to H. Sapiens.

[WCGreen]

5. they said Erectus....

That's a bad thing except for procreation, none of that amateur stuff...

[roguevalley]

11. geneticists say it was only 40K years ago H.S.S. emerged. So we've

only been worthless for 40,000 years.

This sort of gives a new spin to "Old Europe" :evilgrin:

[starroute]

3. They're going to have to give up the idea that Homo erectus evolved in Africa

This article still tries to maintain the African scenario by comparing apples to oranges -- saying "tools in East Africa date back to 2.5 million years ago, while human settlements in the Transcaucasia region date back to a 1.8 million years ago."

But the weight of the evidence increasingly suggests that those first tool-users were Australopithecines -- of the late variety sometimes called "Homo habilis" for no particularly good reason -- and that the leap to Homo erectus took place outside of Africa.

Australopithecines, even the late ones, were still long-armed and short-legged and clearly spent time in the trees as well as on the ground. But Homo erectus was fully terrestrial -- pretty much like us from the neck down.

And among the fossils of that type the ones from Dmanisi in the Caucasus are the very oldest. Africa, Java, China, and now France all offer similar remains that are just a few hundred thousand years younger -- but there's no reason to think Africa has any priority.

The presence of the "hobbits" in Indonesia provides further evidence that the Australopithecines did make it out of Africa, which was previously doubted.

It still seems certain that modern humans did evolve in Africa 180,000 or so years ago and spread out over the rest of the world from there. But that earlier leap around 1.8 million years ago is far more likely to have occurred elsewhere.

[aquart]

8. The hobbits were australopithecines???

Your "far more likely" is wonderfully evidence free, btw.

[Xithras]

10. His statement isn't evidence free at all

Homo georgicus provides all the evidence the argument really needs. An transitional erectus precursur species found outside of the African continent. The idea is gaining popularity that habilis left Africa, and that a subset of the population evolved into erectus somewhere in Asia. Erectus later re-entered Africa as it spread, and it was a branch of those African erectus that eventually led to our own species.

[Lucian]

9. The "hobbits" were actually Homo floresiensis.

[Blue_In_AK]

4. In the eternal march of evolution

we are but a tiny step. That thought is comforting to me.

[niceypoo]

6. Proof humans walked with the dinosaurs

http://www.bible.ca/tracks/tracks.htm">Human & Dinosaur tracks together



http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_yHBd9JUotKs/SjcwyStUqiI/AAAAAAAAALs/GupLWfXLvAo/s400/dinosaur+saddle.jpg

[arcadian]

7. I specifically told them to be there 1.37 million years ago.

And I'll bet they stay late and drink all the beer.