ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 24, 1994                   TAG: 9402240041
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO                                LENGTH: Medium

FOSSILS SHOW MAN DID MORE TRAVELING

The discovery of pre-human fossils from Java - at 1.8 million years, the oldest ever found outside Africa - suggests that human ancestors lived in Asia much earlier than once believed and raises new questions about our history.

Chemical dating shows a fossilized piece of skull from a hominid called Homo erectus is 800,000 years older than believed, geologists Carl Swisher and Garniss Curtis announced Wednesday.

The finding shows that Homo erectus lived in Africa and Asia at the same time and casts doubt on a theory that these hominids left Africa only after the invention of a new type of tool.

"This means that we have to look for new reasons of why Homo erectus got out of Africa," Swisher said.

A report is to be published Friday in the journal Science.

Swisher and Curtis are specialists in the age-dating of geologic specimens at the Institute of Human Origins in Berkeley, Calif.

Previously it was believed that Homo erectus evolved from earlier pre-humans in Africa and stayed on that continent until the invention, 1.4 million years ago, of Acheulean tools, which had double edges and were much better than flaked stone used earlier.

Examples of Acheulean tools have been found in Europe and Africa, but none has ever been discovered in Asia.

This suggests, Swisher said, that some Homo erectus left Africa before the tools were invented and migrated to Asia. After the Acheulean tools were developed in Africa, another group of Homo erectus then migrated to Europe, taking the tools with them.

If the new date is confirmed, it suggests "people were on the move out of Africa much earlier than we thought," Philip Rightmire of the State University of New York said. 


 by CNB