Human teeth discovered in southern China provide evidence that our species left the African continent up to 70,000 years earlier than prevailing theories suggest, a study published on Wednesday said.
Homo sapiens reached present-day China 80,000-120,000 years ago, according to the study, which could redraw the migration map for modern humans.
“The model that is generally accepted is that modern humans left Africa only 50,000 years ago,” said Maria Martinon-Torres, a researcher at University College London and a co-author of the study.
“In this case, we are saying the H. sapiens is out of Africa much earlier,” she told the peer-reviewed journal Nature, which published the study.
While the route they travelled remains unknown, previous research suggests the most likely path out of East Africa to east Asia was across the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East.
The findings also mean that the first truly modern humans — thought to have emerged in east Africa some 200,000 years ago — landed in China well before they went to Europe.
There is no evidence to suggest that H. sapiens entered the European continent earlier than 45,000 years ago, at least 40,000 years after they showed up in present-day China.
The 47 teeth exhumed from a knee-deep layer of grey, sandy clay inside the Fuyan Cave near the town of Daoxian closely resemble the dental gear of “contemporary humans,” according to the study.
They could only have come from a population that migrated from Africa, rather than one that evolved from an another species of early man such as the extinct Homo erectus, the authors said.
The scientists also unearthed the remains of some 38 mammals, including specimens of five extinct species, one of them a giant panda larger than those in existence today.
No tools were found.
“Judging by the cave environment, it may not have been a living place for humans,” lead author Wu Liu from the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing told AFP.