ScienceScience Daily1.9-million-year-old discovery rewrites the story of human evolution
Researchers have dated a key archaeological site in the Jordan Valley to at least 1.9 million years old, pushing back the known timeline of humans leaving Africa by hundreds of thousands of years.
New evidence suggests that early humans reached the Jordan Valley at least 1.9 million years ago, hundreds of thousands of years earlier than scientists previously thought. Advanced dating methods revealed that the ‘Ubeidiya site is roughly as old as the famous Dmanisi site in Georgia, placing both among the earliest known human settlements outside Africa.
A new study has found that early humans reached the Jordan Valley at least 1.9 million years ago, far earlier than the previous estimate of 1.2 to 1.6 million years.
Researchers from three universities used three independent dating methods on the site of Ubeidiya, including cosmic ray isotope analysis and uranium-lead dating of fossilised snail shells.
The findings make Ubeidiya one of the earliest known sites where ancient humans lived outside Africa, rewriting a key chapter in the story of human evolution.
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