December 15, 2005. Copyright, 2005, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Artifacts show early humans roamed Britain

LONDON, December 15, Graphic News: Ancient tools found in Britain show that early humans were living in northern Europe 200,000 years earlier than previously thought, at a time when the climate was warm enough for lions, rhinoceroses, elephants and sabre tooth tigers to also roam what is now England.

A team of researchers from the UK, Italy and Canada say that 32 black flint artifacts, found in fossil-rich river sediments in Pakefield in eastern England, date back 700,000 years and represent the earliest unequivocal evidence for human presence north of the Alps.

Fossils and stone tools discovered in Atapuerca, Spain, confirm that humans lived in southern Europe 780,000 years ago but it was unclear when they moved north.

The findings, published in the scientific journal Nature, dashes the long-held theory that humans did not migrate north from the relatively warm climates of the Mediterranean region until half a million years ago. Previously, the earliest traces of humans in Europe north of the Alps was a 500,000-year-old shin bone and two incisor teeth, along with a number of flint tools, unearthed at Boxgrove in southern England.

ÒThe discovery that early humans could have existed this far north this long ago was startling,Ó said Chris Stringer, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum, one of four British scientists who took part in the study.

ÒNow that we know this, we can search for the remains of these people, knowing that we may find them,Ó he said. ÒTheir arrival in northern Europe could have happened even earlier. We have a whole new area of research opening up to us.Ó

The Pakefield site was on the floodplains of the River Bytham, which was BritainÕs largest river before it was destroyed by glaciers some 450,000 years ago. Known as the Anglian glaciation, an ice sheet one-kilometre high is believed to have reached the outskirts of where London is situated today.

In a commentary in Nature, Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University in the Netherlands said the artifacts pointed not to large-scale colonization of northern Europe, Òbut more to a short-lived human expansion of range, in rhythm with climatic oscillations.Ó It was likely that Òmore significant occupation of the northern parts of Europe did not occur until later,Ó he said.
/ENDS