Ancient Monkey Bone Tools Shake Up the Narrative of Early Human Migration to the Rain Forest

[Judi Lynn]

New evidence pushes back the date for human settlement in jungles, challenging the idea that our ancestors preferred the savannas and plains



Exterior view of the entrance of Fa-Hien Lena cave in Sri Lanka, where archaeological evidence suggests humans lived about 45,000 years ago. (O. Wedage)

By Lorraine Boissoneault
smithsonian.com
March 18, 2019 1:29PM

Sing, archaeologist, an ode to the African savanna. Legendary homeland of Homo sapiens, evolutionary proving ground for our species. Grasslands with sparse trees contributing to upright walking and long-distance hunting. An environment filled to the brim with large, meaty animals providing the fuel for our growing brains. Could any other habitat compare? Certainly not rain forests, overgrown and lacking easy food resources. They may as well be green deserts.

At least, that’s how the story goes.

“For quite a long time, research has been making a strong case that humans originated from East African savannas, and that’s how we ended up colonizing the rest of the world. But this model doesn’t really hold true anymore,” says Eleanor Scerri, an archaeologist and professor at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

In the past, researchers believed humans were almost exclusively adapted to savanna environments. Previous hypotheses suggested Homo sapiens, which evolved around 300,000 years ago, spread across the globe via open grasslands or coastlines, following big game and sources of protein. Early human ancestors would have avoided dense environments like rain forests, the common thinking went, where prey was harder to catch. But now, Scerri and others are working to show that early humans adapted to many environments.

Take South Asia for example, where anatomically modern humans may have started arriving more than 70,000 years ago. Evidence for early humans’ environmental adaptability in this part of the world is becoming more and more abundant. In a recent paper for Nature Communications, researchers from Max Planck (not including Scerri) analyzed more than 15,000 animal bones from Fa-Hien Lena cave in the jungle environment of southwestern Sri Lanka. The majority of the bones came from butchered monkeys and tree squirrels. The study authors concluded that humans living in the area from 45,000 years ago up to 4,000 years ago not only survived in the jungle environment but purposefully adapted their own way of living to do so.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ancient-monkey-bone-tools-shake-narrative-early-human-migration-rain-forest-180971723/#d3fvR5tKKivBS8EJ.99

[rampartc]

1. nothing inconsistant with a species evolving

on savanna 300,000 years ago or
on the beach 400,000 years ago ("the descent of woman" explains a lot of our anatomy)
and living in jungle a mere 40,000 years ago.