New rese­arch shows that Homo sapi­ens tra­ve­led from Afri­ca to East Asia and toward Aus­tra­lia up to 86,000 years ago.
The dis­co­very also sug­gests that modern humans have lived in the regi­on for at least 56,000 years.
This rou­te of human expan­si­on seems to have occur­red much ear­lier than pre­vious­ly belie­ved.
Thanks to a new find tucked insi­de a cave in Laos, experts now belie­ve that humans arri­ved in Aus­tra­lia much ear­lier than we ever thought.
Human fos­sil remains found in 23 feet of cave sedi­ment in the Tam Pá Ling cave in Laos tie tog­e­ther humanity’s trek from Afri­ca into Sou­the­ast Asia and on to Aus­tra­lia, accor­ding to a new stu­dy published in Natu­re Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons. The­se were Australia’s first people.

https://​www​.popu​lar​me​cha​nics​.com/​s​c​i​e​n​c​e​/​a​r​c​h​a​e​o​l​o​g​y​/​a​4​4​1​8​9​0​8​9​/​a​r​c​h​a​e​o​l​o​g​i​s​t​s​-​f​i​n​d​-​h​u​m​a​n​-​f​o​s​s​i​l​s​-​t​h​a​t​-​r​e​w​r​i​t​e​-​h​i​s​t​ory

The timing of the first arri­val of Homo sapi­ens in East Asia from Afri­ca and the degree to which they interbred with or repla­ced local archaic popu­la­ti­ons is con­tro­ver­si­al. Pre­vious dis­co­veries from Tam Pà Ling cave (Laos) iden­ti­fied H. sapi­ens in Sou­the­ast Asia by at least 46 kyr. We report on a recent­ly dis­co­ver­ed fron­tal bone (TPL 6) and tibi­al frag­ment (TPL 7) found in the deepest lay­ers of TPL. Baye­si­an mode­ling of lumi­ne­s­cence dating of sedi­ments and U‑series and com­bi­ned U‑se­ries-ESR dating of mamma­li­an tee­th reve­als a depo­si­tio­nal sequence span­ning ~86 kyr. TPL 6 con­firms the pre­sence of H. sapi­ens by 70 ± 3 kyr, and TPL 7 extends this ran­ge to 77 ± 9 kyr, sup­port­ing an ear­ly disper­sal of H. sapi­ens into Sou­the­ast Asia. Geo­me­tric mor­pho­me­tric ana­ly­ses of TPL 6 sug­gest des­cent from a gra­ci­le immi­grant popu­la­ti­on rather than evo­lu­ti­on from or admix­tu­re with local archaic populations.

https://​www​.natu​re​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​s​4​1​4​6​7​-​023 – 38715‑y?CJEVENT=f393a77d237511ee81f56d470a18b8fa

A rare glim­pse of our first ances­tors in main­land Sou­the­ast Asia

What con­nects a fos­sil found in a cave in nor­t­hern Laos with stone tools made in north Aus­tra­lia? The ans­wer is, we do. When our ear­ly Homo sapi­ens ances­tors first arri­ved in Sou­the­ast Asia on their way from Afri­ca to Aus­tra­lia, they left evi­dence of their pre­sence in the form of human fos­sils that accu­mu­la­ted over thou­sands of years deep in a cave.

https://​www​.eure​ka​lert​.org/​n​e​w​s​-​r​e​l​e​a​s​e​s​/​9​9​2​017