150,000-year-old stone tools reveal humans lived in tropical rainforests

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A 150,000-year-old stone tool from the Ivory Coast
(Image credit: Jimbob Blinkhorn, MPG )

Ancient people resided in tropical rain forests much earlier than we initially believed, a brand-new research study discovers.

Before now, the earliest proof of human beings(Humankindresiding in rain forest environments dated to 70,000 years ago in Asia and Oceania, and just 18,000 years ago in Africa.

Now, according to a brand-new research study released Wednesday (Feb. 26 )in the journal Naturescientists have actually discovered proof that human beings resided in rainforest-like locations in Africa as far back as 150,000 years earlier.

“Our results push back the earliest known presence of humans in tropical forests by more than twice the previously established estimate in another region of the world and also in Africa,” research study lead author Eslem Ben Arousa scientist at limit Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany, informed Live Science in an e-mail.

Modern people progressed from our hominin forefathers in Africa some 300,000 years agoaccording to the earliest recognized H. sapiens fossils, which were discovered in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco. Others found in Ethiopia date to about 200,000 years agoThese were discovered in locations that are believed to have actually been meadows at the time of ancient human inhabitance.

Related: Modern human beings emerged after 2 unique groups in Africa mated over 10s of countless years

In the 1980s, scientists found stone tools, such as choices, buried deep underground at a website called Bété I in West Africa’s Ivory Coast. At the time, they were not able to date the stone tools, according to a declarationNow, with the arrival of brand-new strategies, such as optically promoted luminescencewhich allows scientists to see when things were last exposed to heat from the sun’s rays, scientists had the ability to date the tools to 150,000 years earlier.

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What’s more, the group exposed traces of ancient rainforest-specific plants, providing brand-new insights into the damp environments in which these ancient people lived.

“Our palaecological study have shown the presence of Hunteria and Oil Palms, they are typical taxa [a group of organisms] for this ecozone and that [of] a wet tropical forest,” Ben Arous discussed.

The initial trench where scientists discovered the 150,000-year-old stone tools in the Ivory Coast. (Image credit: Jimbob Blinkhorn, MPG)

Nowadays, the southern Ivory Coast is a tropical rain forest community, however previously, it was uncertain whether it was still a damp tropical forest 150,000 years back.

These discoveries show that rainforest-like environments were not a barrier to human growth, and rather were populated numerous countless years earlier. Furthermore, the existence of such old human artifacts in this area supports the theory that Humankind might have emerged in numerous locations around Africa, instead of all coming from a single place and spreading out outside.

“We know humans did not have one single ‘birthplace’ in Africa. Yet it is currently unclear whether we are looking at humans evolving in Africa’s grasslands and savannahs, or whether a number of different environments were involved,” Ben Arous stated. “Our results indicate that we are looking at the latter scenario.”

Ben Arous likewise recommends that ancient human beings who were highly adjusted to residing in rain forests did rarely come across individuals who were adjusted to residing in open meadows.

“At 150 thousand years old, it’s the oldest known site in West Africa and shows that people have been living in this region since at least the Middle Pleistocene,” Ben Arous stated. “This is important because prior to our work, the West African record was thought to be much younger.”

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Jess Thomson is an independent reporter. She formerly worked as a science press reporter for Newsweek, and has actually likewise composed for publications consisting of VICE, The Guardian, The Cut, and Inverse. Jess holds a Biological Sciences degree from the University of Oxford, where she specialised in animal habits and ecology.