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An early hominin arrival in Asia

An excavation has uncovered stone tools in China that are about 2.1 million years old. This evidence pushes back the date of the earliest established signs of a hominin species outside Africa.
  1. John Kappelman

    1. John Kappelman is in the Departments of Anthropology and Geological Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA.

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Imagine a world nearly devoid of humans. This theme is often explored in post-apocalyptic science fiction, and it was the case for most of Earth’s history until early hominins (members of the evolutionary tree that includes humans, extinct species of the genus Homo and other closely related bipedal species) moved out of Africa into unknown territories, to eventually populate the planet. Which hominins made this journey? When and how did they migrate, and by which routes? Field-based research that uncovers traces of these early dispersals could provide some answers, as well as insight into hominin behaviour. In a paper in Nature, Zhu et al.1 report evidence of hominin activity in China more than 2 million years ago, revealing an earlier time frame than was previously known for a hominin presence outside Africa.

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Nature 559, 480-481 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05293-9

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