'Out of Africa' theory thrown into doubt
An ancestor of modern humans may have became extinct earlier than was previously thought, throwing doubt on a key theory of human evolution.
Homo erectus, widely considered to be a direct ancestor of our own species Homo sapiens, migrated out of Africa around 1.8 million years ago.
By around 500,000 years ago it had vanished from Africa and much of Asia, but until now was thought to have survived in Indonesia until as recently as 35,000 years ago.
Early modern humans reached the region about 40,000 years ago, and so were believed to have co-existed with their ancestors.
The new research suggests this assumption was wrong, and Homo erectus disappeared long before the arrival of Homo sapiens in Asia.
New excavations and dating analysis indicate that Homo erectus was extinct by at least 143,000 years ago, and perhaps more than 550,000 years ago.
If this is the case, it challenges the widely accepted "Out of Africa" hypothesis which holds that modern humans became fully evolved in Africa before emigrating to other parts of the world.
The model predicts an overlap between Homo sapiens and older species they replaced outside Africa.
The late survival of Homo erectus in Indonesia had previously been held up as evidence supporting the theory.
Dr Etty Indriati, from Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia, who co-led the investigations at two sites on Indonesia's Solo River, said: "Homo erectus probably did not share habitats with modern humans."
An alternative "multiregional" hypothesis proposes that modern humans evolved from ancestor species in Africa, Asia and Europe.
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Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
is this my friend Tasmin?