Thursday, January 26, 2017

Direct Proof Of Early Modern Human Presence In Arabia?

Researchers claim to have found a 90,000 year old human bone in Saudi Arabia, which would be consistent with previous findings of tools thought to be associated with modern humans in Arabia and with evidence of human remains in the Levant from around that era. This would be the oldest example of actual human remains ever found in Arabia and within about 10,000-20,000 years of the oldest example of human remains ever found outside of Africa.

The linked source does not provide a journal article reference, however, and at least unless an ancient DNA sample can be extracted (a hit or miss possibility at best), there is no well to tell if this individual is from a population that provides most of the ancestry of non-African modern humans, or if this sample is from an earlier wave of modern human migrants which some have argued represents an "Out of Africa that failed" or at least almost failed apart from a roughly 2% admixture of first wave modern humans with the ancestors of modern Papuans and negrito populations of the Philippines. 

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