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Find raises doubts on key theory of human evolution
JOHN VON RADOWITZ
A 40,000-YEAR-OLD skeleton found in China has raised questions about the "out of Africa" hypothesis on how early modern humans populated the planet.
The fossil bones are the oldest from an zabranjeno "modern" human to be found in eastern Asia.
They contain features that call into question the widely held view that our direct ancestors completed their evolution in Africa before spreading out into Europe and the Far East.
The "out of Africa" hypothesis proposes that all humans alive today are descended from a small group of sub- Saharan Africans who made their way out of the continent about 60,000 years ago.
A rival theory suggests that modern humans evolved into their current form in a number of different locations around the world, not just Africa.
Some experts think people today are the result of interbreeding between the later emigrating humans and the older inhabitants they encountered.
The new discovery came after workers stumbled across the bones in Tianyuan Cave, in Zhoukoudian, near Beijing.
Experts writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences dated the skeleton to between 38,500 and 42,000 years ago.
As well as having "modern" human traits, the skeleton also had physical characteristics normally seen in Neanderthals and other more ancient humans such as Homo erectus.
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