178,000 years of Chinese history? That’s really something to chew on

[Mr.Cyan]

Discovery of three ancient human teeth in a cave in Guizhou adds piece to puzzle of Chinese origins

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/1987039/178000-years-chinese-history-thats-really-something-chew

After removing several metres of sediment from an ancient, underground river bed deep inside a limestone cave in Bijie, Guizhou, a team of researchers led by Professor Zhao Lingxia discovered three human teeth.

Anatomically, they resembled those of modern humans, but dating of the sediment showed they were buried 112,000 to 178,000 years ago, before the first modern humans walked out of Africa, around 75,000 years ago.

"There is overwhelming evidence from fossil records that China was populated with humans before the arrival of African settlers"

Professor Liu Wu

The team’s discovery three years ago, detailed in a paper in the journal Acta Anthropologica Sinica earlier this year, added a new piece to the puzzle of Chinese origins but not the full picture, in the absence of DNA analysis.

Over the past decade, ancient human fossils have been found in almost every province in southern China, many of them from sediments dating back 100,000 years or more but with anatomical features little different to the Chinese people living today.

 

[Woodsman]

Do you think maybe Chinese propaganda might be influencing these findings?

How well does science fare under the current government? I wonder if it's anything like trying to dig in the sand looking for history on the West Bank.

 

[mkrnhr]

Couldn't trace the paper in Acta Anthropologica Sinica because it's in Chinese. So how they dated teeth found in a "underground river bed deep inside a limestone cave" is not clear. However, if the dating is correct and these teeth really belong to homo sapiens, it only means that sapiens spread much earlier than thought, as discussed here about the "Daoxian Man": _http://www.nature.com/news/teeth-from-china-reveal-early-human-trek-out-of-africa-1.18566
Error bars become bigger, and evidence becomes scarcer the further we go into the past.

As for the possible nationalistic bias in this study, I don't think it's the case because the author makes it clear that whoever these Homo sapiens were, modern Chinese are not descended from them. Usually nationalists like to say things like "we're descended from the first inhabitants of this land", "our ancestors came from nowhere else" or even "our ancestors helped ancient Egyptians to build the pyramids".

 

[Mr.Cyan]

As for the possible nationalistic bias in this study, I don't think it's the case because the author makes it clear that whoever these Homo sapiens were, modern Chinese are not descended from them. Usually nationalists like to say things like "we're descended from the first inhabitants of this land", "our ancestors came from nowhere else" or even "our ancestors helped ancient Egyptians to build the pyramids".

Had similar views - what I found interesting about the article is that it coincides with the info the C's have provided us - and also reminded me of a paragraph from Jessup's the "Case for the UFO", where they discovered a perfectly machined "metallic part" that was embedded deep in a coal bed that was 300,000 years old. I guess there are the known issues with the accuracy of radiocarbon dating - but this info generally goes down the path where Homo sapiens is definitely much older than the "official" out of Africa story.

 

[Niall]

Do you think maybe Chinese propaganda might be influencing these findings?

How well does science fare under the current government? I wonder if it's anything like trying to dig in the sand looking for history on the West Bank.

Israel needs to prove it existed as such in ancient times in order to justify its horrific existence today; China doesn't. Big difference!

The only reason their find is surprising is because people assume the 'Out of Africa' origin story is true.