On Monday, April 9, archaeologists announced a discovery of an 85,000 year-old human finger bone in Saudi Arabia.This discovery may dramatically alter our current view of human migration history.
If this bone is confirmed to be officially 85,000 years old, it would be the first and earliest Homo sapiens fossils found on the Arabian Peninsula. It would also be the oldest specimen of our species to be dated outside of Africa.
It is traditionally believed that humans migrated out of Africa in one giant exodus. These early humans went from one location to the next, similarly to a New York City subway. However, the accuracy of this belief has long been questioned by archaeologists and paleoanthropologists. Some argue that the actual journey was much more complicated, and probably filled with multiple routes and delays. This recent discovery provides evidence that supports these arguments.
Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist who works for the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, commented on what the find meant for his team. “This discovery of a fossil finger bone for me is a dream come true because it supports arguments that our teams have been making for more than 10 years,” he stated during a media briefing. Petraglia wrote about the discovery in a paper that he published for the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
This is not the only finding that challenges traditional beliefs. Recently, archaeologists have also discovered 80,000 year human teeth from Asia and 65,000 year old relics from Australia. For Robyn Inglis, an archaeologist at the University of York in England, these findings did not come as a surprise. “It’s a discovery that we’ve been expecting for a while. It’s become increasingly clear that humans have dispersed far out of Africa and the Levant before 60,000 years ago, a date suggested by genetics.”
This could completely change the history curriculum in our schools, but it may take some time before the human migration timeline is updated. David Holt, a social studies teacher at Pleasant Valley High School says, “Even with this new discovery it will take some time before the textbooks are updated to include these new finds..” The school will continue to teach the current history of human migration as it is.
