Jawbone Find Leads To Human History Rethink

Modern humans were living in England as long as 44,000 years ago - far earlier than previously thought, according to new research.

Analysis of a jawbone fragment discovered in a Devon cave suggests our ancestors spread rapidly across Europe during the last Ice Age, and coexisted with Neanderthals for millennia.

The piece of upper jaw, containing three teeth, was unearthed in 1927 in Kent's Cavern in Torquay.

A previous attempt to date the bone indicated that it was 35,000 years old.

But there were doubts about the reliability of that date because of the glue used to conserve the bone after it was excavated.

An international team of scientists has now carbon-dated animal bones found near the jaw, at a similar depth below the cave surface.

They conclude in the journal Nature that the fragment is between 44,000 and 41,000 years old.

Professor Tom Higham, deputy director of Oxford University's radiocarbon accelerator unit said: "We believe this piece of jawbone is the earliest direct evidence we have of modern humans in north western Europe, at a site at the very outermost limits of the initial dispersal of our species."

CT scans confirmed the teeth came from an anatomically modern human, not a Neanderthal.

Homo sapiens are believed to have moved into Europe around 42,000 to 44,000 years ago, after migrating out of Africa.

They left tools and ornaments described as "Aurignacian" but until now none of the human remains associated with them have been older than 39,000 to 41,000 years.

Dr Higham said: "[This] tells us a great deal about the dispersal speed of our species across Europe during the last Ice Age.

"It also means that early humans coexisted with Neanderthals in this part of the world, something that a number of researchers have doubted."

Neanderthals, an anatomically different human sub-species, lived in Europe around from 500,000 years ago but became extinct soon after the appearance of Homo sapiens.