Early Date for Tianyuan Cave, China

A paper published today in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Erik Trinkaus and Hong Shang and colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences describes the surprisingly early dates for the early modern human skeleton recovered from Tianyuan Cave, a rockshelter in the Fangshan district of China, about six kilometers southwest of the famous Zhoukoudian Homo erectus site.

A total of 34 pieces of human skeleton appears to be early modern human (with some Neanderthal aspects or midway between Neanderthal and EMH) have been recovered from the site with a calibrated date of between 42,000 and 39,000 (calibrated c14) years before the present. This makes Tianyuan Cave one of the oldest EMH sites in eastern Eurasia (in addition to Niah Cave, Sarawak), and comparable in age to others outside of Africa.

The importance of the date for Tianyuan (and the no-doubt-soon-to-be-debated Neanderthal characteristics) is the current debates about the origins of Early Modern Humans, whether they originated in Africa and then migrated out replacing Neanderthals and Homo erectus (called the Out of Africa hypothesis) or Homo erectus evolved into EMH at several places throughout the world, helped along by gene flow (called the Multi-regional hypothesis). This ca 40,000 year-old-date is similar in date to the oldest occurrences of EMH in the world, at sites like Nazlet Khater 1 (Egypt) and Pestera cu Oase (Romania).

• Tianyuan Cave, more information and sources for this story
• Zhoukoudian, China, Homo erectus site
• What is an "Early Modern Human"? (and why don't we call them 'Cro-Magnon' any more?)