An early European human skull found in Dmanisi, Georgia. Now, a new fossil find in France suggests our ancestors may have reached Europe 200,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Credit: National Centre for the Investigation of Human Evolution
PARIS: Fossils found in a southern French valley suggest our ancestors may have reached Europe 1.57 million years ago - 200,000 years earlier than previously thought.
This revised timing has been sparked by a pile of fossilised bones and teeth uncovered 15 years ago by local man Jean Rouvier in a basalt quarry at Lezignan la Cebe, in the Herault valley, Languedoc.
In the summer of 2008, Rouvier mentioned his find to Jerome Ivorra, an archaeological researcher at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).
The subsequent dig uncovered a large variety of ancient animal bones belonging to cattle, deer and horses as well as carnivorous animals related to cats and dogs.
More importantly, however, about 10 metres down and under the basalt layer, the team found 20 or so tools, most of which bore traces of use.
Rare tools
The surprise came when argon dating showed the site went back 1.57 million years, which makes it substantially older than many other prehistoric sites, according to a paper published in the French journal Comptes Rendus Palevol.
It is older, for example, than the Spanish site at Atapuerca, which dates back a mere 1.2 to 1.1 million years. And as the paper pointed out, the existence of such man-made objects in Europe was extremely rare in this period.
By comparison, the first such tools in East Africa date back to 2.5 million years ago, while human settlements in the Transcaucasia region date back to a 1.8 million years ago.
"A discovery as rich as the one in the Herault Valley offers a real opportunity to better understand the Europe of this period," said a statement from the CNRS, France's Museum of National History and the College de France.
The researchers hope to discover more about the site in digs planned for 2010.
Surely not our ancestors?
If these individuals lived in what is now Europe 1.57 million years ago, surely they are not the ancestors of any modern humans, but probably of Neanderthals? I was of the impression that the firm scientific consensus was that Homo Sapiens emerged from Africa, and that there is no convincing evidence of interbreeding between Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis.