We Left Africa Way Sooner Than Expected

It’s hard to imagine Africa as humanities birthplace these days and it isn’t hard to imagine why early man ran in literally every direction to get away from the place. But it wasn’t always a desert. Back when Rome was running the show, Northern Africa was called “the granary of the world”. Unfortunately bad farming methods, widespread deforestation for ship building, and animal depopulation for gladiator sports lead to the deserts in the area engulfing everything.

But long before empires and pillaging, when did people decide to leave  the cushy confines of Africa? Until recently, stone tools and skeletons from Dmanisi, Georgia were our earliest indications of people chilling outside the confines of Africa about 1.85 million years ago.

However new discoveries have just been made on the Chinese Loess Plateau that date back even further. Artefacts discovered by a Chinese
team that was led by Professor Zhaoyu Zhu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, predate the Georgia skeletons by about 270,000 years.

The 2.12 million year old artefacts that make up a pretty handy stone age toolkit include notches, scrapers, cobble, hammer stones and pointed pieces. Most of the tools are made of quartzite and quartz that the Chinese archaeologists believe came from the Qinling Mountains about 10km away from the dig site. Professor Robin Dennell of Exeter University who was also with the team says “Our discovery means it is necessary now to reconsider the timing of when early humans left Africa.”