Someone New to Welcome to the Archaeology Family! How Exciting!

I can't quite remember how I came across this article today; I feel that someone posted it on Facebook and it caught my eye. Anyways, SOMEONE NEW!

According to the University of New South Wales 4 human-esque fossils that have been found in a cave in China could be a NEW Stone Age people! Now you can't tell me that that is not exciting! The fossils did happen to be found quite a while back but they have just finished all their research and calculations and VOILA!

This is the artist rendering of the new member of the archaeology family via CBC

These fossils are around 14,500- 11,500 years old!

One of the main problems that the archaeologists are having is that the fossils that have been found have a strange (new) mix of archaic and modern remains.

This is the skull remains via Curnoe et al

The archaeologists are giving two potential reasons for this new/ modern Stone Age man

1. that it may be from one of the last surviving archaic populations

          OR

     2.  that East Asia may have had multiple colonizations during the Pleistocene era

Now I do not completely understand where they are going with the second reason. I need to brush up on my knowledge of the Pleistocene era obviously..




Curnoe D, Xueping J, Herries AIR, Kanning B, Taçon PSC, et al. (2012) Human Remains from the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition of Southwest China Suggest a Complex Evolutionary History for East Asians. PLoS ONE 7(3): e31918. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0031918