Homo erectus reached China 600 ky earlier than previously believed

Continuning with this series of posts on new findings in Asia, a paper published on February 18, 2026 (Hua Tu et al. (2026). The oldest in situ Homo erectus crania in eastern Asia: The Yunxian site dates to ~1.77 Ma. Sci. Adv. 12, eady2270. DOI:10.1126/sciadv.ady2270) reports that three skulls belonging to Homo erectus recovered from Yunxian, China were dated to an age of 1.77 million years. This is roughly 600,000 years older than previous estimates.

This new dating is very relevant because it shows a rapid expansion of these hominids across Asia: The oldest remains of erectus are found in Georgia (the Dmanisi site) and are 1.78 to 1.85 Ma. The remains from Indonesia are younger, for instance those from Sanigran are 1.5 to 1.66 Ma., and the age assigned to Chinese remains is close to 1.3 Ma.

Interestingly, this paper mentions two sites in China older than 2.1 million years: "Further, the earliest archaeological traces, as represented by Xihoudu [~2.4 Ma;] and Shangchen [~2.1 Ma]." This could imply a very early out of Africa migration of austraolpithecines perhaps! (see my post on erectus and australopiths in Dmanisi, Georgia).

Yunxian site is on the Han River, in Central China. The paper concludes that:

"The age for Yunxian also indicates that H. erectus at ~1.77 Ma was much more widespread than just Dmanisi in Georgia, although the latter site, at the top of the Olduvai subchron (1.78 to 1.85 Ma), should be slightly older. This supports a rapid dispersal model of H. erectus through Asia beginning after 2 Ma. As the dates for these hominin sites continue to be pushed back in time, it would suggest that the chronological gap between the earliest archaeology at sites like Xihoudu [~2.43 Ma] and Shangchen [~2.1 Ma] and hominin paleontology in China is quickly narrowing. Questions remain, however, as to when and where H. erectus initially appeared and could they have been among the earliest occupants at some of these sites in China and elsewhere that now date to the early Early Pleistocene. If not, then should we be considering alternative hominins as the possible earliest occupants of Asia, particularly because the earliest sites in Asia now predate the traditionally accepted appearance of Homo ergaster/H. erectus (~1.9 Ma). The dates for Yunxian presented here represent a step forward to addressing such questions."

An earlier presence of Homo or australopithecines in East Asia opens the door to a continued migration into America 1.7 to 2.1 million years ago.

The two older sites ~2 Ma

The two sites mentioned further up, over two million years old are linked to the following sources:

G. J. Shen, Y. R. Wang, H. Tu, H. W. Tong, Z. K. Wu, K. Kuman, D. Fink, D. E. Granger, Isochron 26Al/10Be burial dating of Xihoudu: Evidence for the earliest human settlement in northern China. Anthropologie 124, 102790 (2020).
Z. Zhu, R. Dennell, W. Huang, Y. Wu, S. Qiu, S. Yang, Z. Rao, Y. Hou, J. Xie, J. Han, T. Ouyang, Hominin occupation of the Chinese Loess Plateau since about 2.1 million years ago. Nature 559, 608–612 (2018).

I will look into them in a future post, and also, look int the possible origin of the homo group in Asia, instead of Africa.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo erectus left Africa earlier than thought (New 2026 paper)

As mentioned in yesterday's post, there have been some recent discoveries that are changing what we knew about the spread of our ancestors out of Africa and across Eurasia.

A new paper has disclosed that the site of Ubeidiya, in the Valley of the Jordan river has been dated to an age older than 1.9 million years. This is relevant because Acheulean tools, typical of Homo erectus have been found in those sediments, and this date is much older than previous estimates, pushing the first Out Of Africa event further back in time.

The paper: A. Matmon, et al., (2026). Complex exposure-burial history and Pleistocene sediment recycling in the dead sea rift with implications for the age of the Acheulean site of ‘Ubeidiya. Quaternary Science Reviews, Volume 378, 2026, 109871, ISSN 0277-3791, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2026.109871. 🔒

The Abstract reads as follows: "We present early Pleistocene burial ages of the ‘Ubeidiya Formation sediments in the Jordan Valley, a segment of the Dead Sea Rift Valley. A minimum age of ∼1.1 Ma is constrained both by paleomagnetic analysis and U-Pb dating of Melanopsis shells. Simple cosmogenic burial ages (i.e., one very long exposure period followed by one period of burial) calculated from the ratios of 26Al to 10Be and 10Be concentrations indicate ages of ∼3 Ma, contradicting the geological and paleomagnetic constraints as well as a reasonable age of the ‘Ubeidiya archeological site, as it contains human remains. A more sophisticated way of treating the results, by combining numerical modeling of cosmogenic nuclide build up during repeated burial-exposure cycles, paleomagnetic analysis (indicating reverse polarity) and a minimum burial age of 1.1 Ma set by U-Pb dating of Melanopsis shells, suggests two most probable time slots (1.19-1.77 and 1.93- 2.14 Ma) for the absolute age of the ‘Ubeidiya Formation. However, the skewed distribution of cosmogenic isotope burial ages, with a median age of 2.05 Ma, indicates a much higher probability of the older ages, most likely >1.9 Ma. The exposure-burial history that emerges from the model implies recycling of sediments previously deposited and buried in the rift valley, between 4.5 and 3.2 Ma, and subsequently exhumed, eroded, transported and then redeposited along the ‘Ubeidiya paleo lake shoreline."

Previous research had provided inconclusive dates, and used obscure methods. The consensus dates for the tools found there were between 1.2 and 1.6 million years. So this discovery pushes the first Out Of Africa migration back at least 300,000 years.

Furthermore, some previous dating of 3 Ma was due to the "recycling", that is the erosion of old strata, the transport and reburying of older sediment further down the valley making the sites seem older than they really are. However, the burial of sediments also preserved the information of magnetic field reversals which is a useful tool to date old strata ( magnetostratigraphy), the team also used radioactive decay of isotopes formed by cosmic rays in chert and quartz, and dating of snail shells using radioactive decay of Uranium to Lead. These three methods helped define the dating.

These dates make sense, because the earliest homo found in Eurasia, at Dmanisi, Georgia is slightly younger. This earlier presence of erectus in Israel, suggests that these erectus could have moved north towards Georgia, and also east, across Asia, reaching Eastern Asia (Indonesia and China) much earlier than previously expected (as we will see in my next post), and also, a possible continuation of their journey into America. They had almost 2 million years to do so before the arrival of Modern Humans in Eurasia.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Neanderthal genes in Africans: a confirmed fact

Last October I posted about a paper that disclosed that Africans had a higher Neanderthal signature in their mtDNA than Asians or Europeans.

African lack of Neanderthal DNA (and mtDNA) is used as proof of the Out of Africa (OOA) event, because it is said that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens admixed outside of Africa after H. sapiens migrated from Africa on their OOA journey.

A recent paper cast a shadow of doubt on this assumption: they have found signals of Neanderthal DNA in Africans!

The paper is: Identifying and Interpreting Apparent Neanderthal Ancestry in African Individuals by Lu Chen, Aaron B. Wolf, Wenqing Fu, Liming Li, and Joshua M. Akey. Chen et al., 2020, Cell 180, 1–11 February 20, 2020 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.01.012.

It summarizes their research as follows:

"Strikingly, we find that African individuals carry a stronger signal of Neanderthal ancestry than previously thought. We show that this can be explained by genuine Neanderthal ancestry due to migrations back to Africa, predominately from ancestral Europeans, and gene flow into Neanderthals from an early dispersing group of humans out of Africa. Our results refine our understanding of Neanderthal ancestry in African and non-African populations and demonstrate that remnants of Neanderthal genomes survive in every modern human population studied to date"

The paper finds that some of the ancestors of modern Europeans back migrated into Africa after they had split from those who would later become East Asians.

They found 13 African-specific high-frequency Neanderthal haplotypes which are unique to Africans, and only found in Africa, and another 31< haplotypes shared with Europeans. Specific African genes means that selection preserved them because they gave those carrying them some immune benefits and also protection against UV radiation in sunlight.

So now we know that ALL humans have Neanderthal genes in their genome, including Africans.

This gene flow, which had not been recognized until now also caused biased estimations of Neanderthal admixture in Asians and Europeans: East Asians seemed to have 20% more Neanderthal DNA than Europeans, which was odd, considering that Neanderthals lived in western Eurasia so admixture there would have been higher than in the Far East.

But now it seems that roughly 0.3 to 0.5 % of African genome was inherited from Neanderthals (vs. 1.8% in Non-Africans).

So factoring in this African Neanderthal content, the East Asians ended up with only 8% more Neanderthal genes than Europeans.

The study found "[in] African populations, we identified approximately 17 Mb of putative Neanderthal sequence per individual"

Compare thiese 17Mb with what they found in Europeans and Asians:

"we found similar levels of Neanderthal ancestry in Europeans (51 Mb/individual), East Asians (55 Mb/individual), and South Asians (55 Mb/individual)"

So Africans have roughly one third of the Neanderthal admixture that non-Africans have! See the image below which shows exactly this (non-Africans in Blue, Africans in brown):

Neanderthal genetic admixture in humans. From Fig. 2 in Chen et al.

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Finally, around 94 percent of Neandertal DNA sequences found in Modern Africans is also shared with Non-Africans.

The paper explains the Neanderthal admixture into Africa as follows: "In summary, these data indicate that both pre-OOA human-to-Neanderthal gene flow and elevated historic backmigration contribute to the signal of Neanderthal ancestry detected in Africans.".

The first wave of humans to leave Africa between 250 and 150 kya, mixed with Neanderthals in Eurasia and passed on to them some archaic human genes. These were lost as this pre-OOA wave became extinct. The Neanderthals then mixed with the OOA wave and part of these admixed modern Humans returned to Africa bringing the genes with them.

Perhaps further studies -Science news reports an unpublished study that ratifies Chen et al. findings: "as-yet-unpublished work by Sarah Tishkoff, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania. She told Science she has also found higher-than-expected levels of apparent Neanderthal DNA in Africans."

I have written many posts about "into Africa events", but this one is the first paper to conclusively prove the presence of Neanderthal genes in modern Africans.

This will open the gates to more scrutiny on the origin of the higher "African" diversity when compared to the rest of humankind. This diversity is surely due to admixture with archaic populations and not only to bottlenecks caused by an OOA migration.

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2020 by Austin Whittall © 

Stone tools 2.6 My old in Northern India... Who made them?

Thank you NeilB for drawing my attention to this paper: The first Indo-French Prehistorical Mission in Siwaliks and the discovery of anthropic activities at 2.6 million years, Anne Dambricourt Malasse, Comptes Rendus Palevol, Volume 15, Issues 3–4, February–March 2016, Pages 281-294, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crpv.2015.12.001.

It is quite controversial to say the least. It discusses some remains and stone tools 2.6 Million years old found at the foot of the Himalayas in NW India, in the village of Masol

I will quote some parts of this paper:

"In the African paradigm, the most probable cradle of Homo genus is the north of the Rift Valley, rather than Central and South Africa.
The first Asian paradigm is interesting. The comparison between the geographical distribution of fossil apes and the oldest human occupations including Riwat, shows clearly a superposition (Fig. 2). The partial mandible of Longgupo was first assigned to a descendant from Homo habilis, then, a dozen of years later, to a "mystery ape". This revision arose from the paradigm of “Out of Africa” dating from 1.8 Ma; "such classifications are always open to interpretation. But I am now convinced that the Longgupo fossil and others like it do not represent a pre-erectus human, but rather one or more mystery apes indigenous to southeast Asia's Pleistocene primal forest. In contrast, H. erectus arrived in Asia about 1.6 million years ago." (Ciochon, 2009)."

The tools found at the site (see image below -from Dambricourt's paper) are chopped pebbles or cobbles similar to those of the Oldowan stone technology, the oldest known stone tools:

The 2.6 MY old tools.

The paper concludes: "These hominines were familiar with an environment regularly exposed to monsoon and floods in the plain, where Himalayan rivers provided carrion for meat, grease, marrow and also raw material for the stone tools. Insofar as, on the ground, there is no hard stone other than the quartzite pebbles with a mean size of 15 cm, hominins likely used the direct percussion that gives an idea of their muscle power. The hominins of Masol had a good anatomical knowledge of the carrion as shown by the marks on the bones, which reveal organized, agile and precise gestures. The discovery of anthropic scavenging activity in Siwaliks dating from 2.6 Ma raises now the question of the geographic and phyletic origins of these hominines."

I am not so positive about an Asian origin of these hominins, but they may represent an early dispersal out of Africa of Australopithecines or Homo habilis, earlier than formerly believed.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall ©