New Delhi:
An atypical study, led by a group of scientists from Tel Aviv University has discovered a few fossilised remains of the earliest known modern humans in Israel.
The study, published in the journal Science proves that our ancestors left Africa far earlier than previously thought.
They seem to live outside Africa around 185,000 years ago, some 80,000 years earlier than we thought.
Therefore, the latest findings alter the known theories about recent human evolution.
"We have to rewrite the whole story of human evolution, not just for our own species but all the other species that lived outside of Africa at the time, Professor Israel Hershkovitz from Tel Aviv University said.
"The find breaks the long-established 130,000-year-old limit on modern humans outside of Africa," another researcher from London's Natural History Museum explained.
"The new dating hints that there could be even older Homo sapiens finds to come from the region of western Asia," the scientist added.
#Archéologie: Extraordinaire découverte dans la grotte de #Misliya, en #Israel, d'un fragment de mâchoire humaine daté d'env. 200.000 ans, ce qui en fait le + vieux fossile d'Homo sapiens trouvé hors d'Afriquehttps://t.co/9Sd1UxJX0P
— Frederique Schillo (@FredSchillo) January 26, 2018
Researchers conduct year-long studies to analyse the fragment of a jawbone with eight teeth and it seems like the fossil is of a modern human being rather than a old one.
In order to confirm the same, scientists further scan the jawbone and the tissue beneath the tooth crowns and found that the remains are uniquely associated with modern human beings.
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Separate examinations, carried out in three different laboratories show that the fossils are 177,000-194,000 years old.
The remain was discovered at Misliya cave in the year 2002.
However, this is not the first time that researchers discovered evidence of human fossils.
In last two years, researchers from across the globe have found enough remains of Homo sapiens and they did not know whether they fitted.
"We had so many new pieces of evidence and we didn't know where they fitted," said Prof Hershkovitz.
"Now with the new discovery, all the pieces fall into place - an exodus possibly as early as 250,000 years ago, which is the date of the tools found in the Misliya Cave," he stated further.
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Earlier studies suggest that present-day people from outside Africa trace their ancestry to an exodus just 60,000 years ago. Most DNA studies did not find evidence of those older migrations in our genes.
"Les premiers humains modernes hors d'Afrique": La découverte de la mâchoire de #Misliya, qui révolutionne nos connaissances sur Homo sapiens, est présentée par le Prof. Israel Hershkovitz & son équipe internationale dans @sciencemagazine https://t.co/mL0fOnKl5K
— Frederique Schillo (@FredSchillo) January 26, 2018
