New analysis revises earliest Homo sapiens presence in China by roughly 200,000 years

Amazing stuff! 

"Skeletal remains of a modern human discovered in 1958 were found in southern China’s Liujiang District. It was previously thought that the remains were up to 227,000 years old. It is thought modern humans began their trek out of Africa about 300,000 years ago.

Now a re-analysis of the bones published in Nature Communications has revised the estimate age of the Chinese remains to between 33,000 and 23,000 years ago. ...

Besides Homo sapiens, however, other ancient humans made it to East Asia much earlier.

Remains found near Beijing belonging to a Homo erectus individual known as “Peking Man” are between 230,000 and 780,000 years old. Other hominin finds in China are nearly 2 million years old."

From the abstract:

"The emergence of Homo sapiens in Eastern Asia is a topic of significant research interest. However, well-preserved human fossils in secure, dateable contexts in this region are extremely rare, and often the subject of intense debate owing to stratigraphic and geochronological problems. Tongtianyan cave, in Liujiang District of Liuzhou City, southern China is one of the most important fossils finds of H. sapiens, though its age has been debated, with chronometric dates ranging from the late Middle Pleistocene to the early Late Pleistocene. Here we provide new age estimates and revised provenience information for the Liujiang human fossils, which represent one of the most complete fossil skeletons of H. sapiens in China. U-series dating on the human fossils and radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating on the fossil-bearing sediments provided ages ranging from ~33,000 to 23,000 years ago (ka). The revised age estimates correspond with the dates of other human fossils in northern China, at Tianyuan Cave (~40.8–38.1 ka) and Zhoukoudian Upper Cave (39.0–36.3 ka), indicating the geographically widespread presence of H. sapiens across Eastern Asia in the Late Pleistocene, which is significant for better understanding human dispersals and adaptations in the region."

New analysis revises earliest Homo sapiens presence in China Some of China’s oldest Homo sapiens remains are about 10 times younger than previously thought.

New Late Pleistocene age for the Homo sapiens skeleton from Liujiang southern China (open access)

Fig. 1: Map and plan view of Tongtianyan cave.