humans in Europe earlier than thought?

There is an article in the Washington Post today that may be of interest to members of this list. The article is based on a recent publication in Nature.
 
Best,
Charles
 
Tools Found in Britain Show Much Earlier Human Existence
from the Washington Post
 
A chance discovery on a routine field trip to England's Suffolk seacoast led
to evidence that humans reached northern Europe 700,000 years ago, about
200,000 years earlier than previously thought, scientists said yesterday.
 
The recovery of 32 hand-worked black flint flakes from seashore sediment
vindicated researchers who had sought for two centuries to unearth proof of
human habitation in the fossil-rich lowlands bordering the North Sea.
 
"Every effort had failed to prove there were tools, and we assumed that
people just weren't there," said paleoanthropologist Christopher Stringer of
London's Natural History Museum, who is part of the 19-member team studying
the deposits. "But absence of evidence does not necessarily prove evidence
of absence."
http://tinyurl.com/db4d4

 
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Charles W. Carrigan, Ph.D.
Olivet Nazarene University
Dept. of Geology
One University Ave.
Bourbonnais, IL 60914
PH: (815) 939-5346
FX: (815) 939-5071
 
 
Received on Thu Dec 15 12:41:28 2005