Oldest human fossil found

Press, 23 November 1988, Page 57

Oldest human fossil found

NZPA Beijing A human jawbone unearthed in central China has been found to date back two million years, making it the oldest human fossil discovered in China, an archaeologist says. The jawbone, containing several teeth, was discovered in 1986 near the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in Sichuan province, but dating tests were completed only recently. The official "People’s Daily” published the conclusion in a front-page report and said this reinforced still inconclusive arguments that humans originated in Asia, not Africa. Ji Hongxiang, an archaeologist at the Academy of Social Sciences and a member of the team that excavated the site, said in a telephone interview that experts believed the owner of the jawbone was able to use fire and simple tools. The bone was found buried with numerous bones of monkeys and other mammals, Ji said. The oldest human remains previously found in China were teeth discovered in Yuanmu county in southern China’s Yunnan province in 1965. They were determined to be 1.7 million years old.

China’s most famous human fossils are the Peking Man bones discovered near Beijing in 1929 and lost during World War 11. They were dated as 500,000 years old in the 19305, but some experts believe that more advanced tests used now might prove them to be considerably older.

Fossil finds in eastern Africa indicate that the earliest kind of primitive humans, called Homo habilis or tool-users, lived there about 2.5 million years ago. Homo habilis was followed by upright man, Homo erectus, and finally Homo sapiens or thinking man, afto considered modern man. 1