Timeline of modern human’s appearance in Asia revised
Most scientific theories claim that all modern ancestors of Homo Sapiens originated from Africa. According to hypotheses, people evolved on the African continent, and then migrated to Asia, and eventually reached Australia about 60,000 years ago.
However, technological advances in DNA analysis, improved identification methods for archaeological finds, and results of interdisciplinary research put existing theories in doubt. The corresponding materials were published in journal Science.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of the Human History (Jena, Germany) and the University of Hawaii in Manoa (USA), proceeding from the anthropological discoveries made in the Asia over the past decade, have concluded that human appeared in Asia and Near Oceania much earlier - about 120 thousand years ago.
This is also evidenced by human fossils and H.Sapiens remains dated to between 70000 and 120000 years, found in remote parts of Asia, in South and Central China.
Moreover, in Asia, the ancestor of modern human has entered into biological contacts with the "indigenous inhabitants" - Denisovans and Neanderthals. As a result of interbreeding, Neanderthals are responsible for 1-4% of the genome of all modern non-Africans. And, for example, in the genetics of Melanesians, on average, 5% of genes belongs of the Denisovans and 2% to Neanderthals.
In the light of these new findings, the common understanding of human movements and the spread of material culture has become more complicated. In the future, the team intends to focus research on the Asian part of the Old World in order to fill the existing gaps in the study of evolutionary chronology.
