Having no analysis of ancient DNA in their hands, scientists applied the Bayesian approach – a mathematical method that allows you to build an evolutionary tree based on heterogeneous source data. According to calculations, intelligent man lived on the territory of China already 400 thousand years ago. This contradicts the results obtained earlier.
In 1978, two incomplete human skulls and bone fragments were found during excavations in the Apidima cave in northern Greece. Anthropologists have determined that one belonged to early Homo sapiens, the other to a Neanderthal. The uranium-thorium method showed the age of the find – 210 thousand years. This is the oldest intelligent person outside the ancestral homeland. However, some researchers doubt that the skulls from Harbin and Apidima can be attributed to Homo sapiens, and criticize the dating.
And here is a new sensation – in Israel, several fragments of a 140-120 thousand-year-old skull were found in the Nesher Ramla cave. They combine archaic and advanced Neanderthal features, so scientists consider them as a special ancestral line of this kind of people. And given the general details with two more types of people, a hypothesis about a special line of Neanderthal ancestors, isolated about 400 thousand years ago and ended its existence in Nesher Ramla, suggests itself. At the same time, Sapiens had already settled in the caves to the north of them.
So far, the history of the human race is rather complicated and far from complete. The reason for this is a lot of finds not only in Europe and Africa, but also in the Middle East, in China. And, of course, this is not the limit. Different degrees of preservation, a variety of techniques open up a wide scope for interpretation. One thing is clear: for the last 200 thousand years, the planet has been inhabited by many populations of ancient people, including Homo sapiens. They actively migrated, exchanged technologies, and possibly interbred.
The earth, whether we want it or not, is invaded by monkeys who call themselves the first (primate from Latin. primatus is the first place, seniority) and whatever one may say, but the so–called intelligent people (Homo sapiens) are just one of the 200 species currently living – from lemurs to humans of the order of primates or monkeys. Well, what kind of monkeys, to one degree or another, many people know: loud, noisy, with a herd instinct, with a pronounced hierarchical system of dominance-subordination, matriarchy prevails in many species of monkeys. Emotions, grimacing, clowning, etc. in monkeys often prevail over reason. All this also takes place in man, the first monkey of the planet.