Finger bone points to early humans in Arabia

Paris : A lone finger bone unearthed in the desert suggests modern humans had penetrated deep into Arabia already 85,000 years ago, said a study Monday that claimed to advance our African exodus by millennia.

The research, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, challenged a long-held consensus that humans started to move en masse from our birthplace in Africa only about 60,000 years ago, with a few small, unsuccessful migrations before.

Recent archaeological finds have started to question that idea, with some claiming evidence of homo sapiens spreading beyond Africa and the adjacent Levant region already 120,000 years ago or more.

However, many of those discoveries -- including from China and Australia -- have doubts hovering over their authenticity and dating, said the authors of Monday’s study. Their new fossil finger bone, on the other hand, unquestionably belonged to a human and could be dated directly using radiometric technology, said the team.

Its age served as rare evidence that “our species was spreading beyond Africa much earlier than previously thought,” said study co-author Huw Groucutt from the University of Oxford.

The bone, just 3.2 centimetres (1.6 inches) long, is thought to be the middle bone of a middle finger, likely of an adult. It was discovered in the Nefud Desert of Saudi Arabia in 2016, and analysed over two years.