fogy sea snail shells bring out that anatomically modern humans carrying stone tools subsist 45,900 years ago in the Near East before colonise Europe . Thefindings , publish inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesthis week , suggest that advanced gemstone tools were n’t invented in Europe as previous studies indicated .
Homo sapiensoriginated in Africa , and agree to the Levantine corridor surmisal , our species spread into Europe via the Near East – which includes the easterly Mediterranean neighborhood of southwestern Asia – between 50,000 and 40,000 year ago , during the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic . But late carbon 14 date of shell ornament from Ksâr ‘ Akil in Lebanon challenged this hypothesis , suggesting that pecker engineering arrived in the Near East after its first coming into court in Europe . date shell from the Levant has been notoriously difficult , however , and now new findings bestow renewed supporting to the Levantine corridor speculation .
An international team led byMarjolein Bosch from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropologyradiocarbon - date the shells of maritime shellfish call Phorcus turbinatus happen in the same archeological stratum as human remains and artifacts at Ksâr ‘ Akil . “ The importance of Ksâr ‘ Akil lie in the fact that we have two modern human fossils , dub ‘ Ethelruda ’ and ‘ Egbert ’ by the original excavator , associated with Upper Paleolithic toolkits from the site , ” Bosch explains in anews freeing .
Their approach integrate radiocarbon date with multiple sources of biochemical data , include an analytic thinking of the protein keep in the shell structure . The squad have it away the snails were feed because their top were slice off ( pictured above ) , which made it easier to get at the flesh . And because the mollusks would have been live when they were collected for economic consumption , the research worker reasoned that the shells should be the same age as the man rest – which were too profligate to date straightaway .
The frame Egbert lived around 43,000 years ago , the years of the shell with the jawbone Ethelruda place the site ’s earlier modern human remains at 45,900 years or older . In Europe , the honest-to-god modern human fossils date to between 45,000 and 43,000 years ago – which means that Ethelruda predates all EuropeanHomo sapiens .
innovative humanity ' usage of Upper Paleolithic instrument in the Near East prior to anyHomo sapiensfossils in Europe suggest that the Levant was the corridor for the dispersal of our ascendant out of Africa and into Europe and Asia . “ Toolkits similar to those link up with Ethelruda and Egbert are also found in other sites in the Levant as well as in Europe , ” Bosch adds . “ These standardised toolkits and the early age in the Near East suggest population dispersals from the Near East to Europe between 55,000 and 40,000 class ago . ”
