For quite some time, the conventional wisdom has been that our species is about 200,000 years old, in large part based on a ~195,000 fossil found in Ethiopia back in the 1960s (although serious dating wasn’t really done until the 90s).
But newer, genetic studies put us closer to 300,000 years old, as a species. The ability to extract and analyze DNA from older remains is really revolutionizing archeology (and has been for some years now). Jus thought I’d share this as it comes it quite often in GQ. We’re still hung up on the question of whether these so-called “anatomically modern humans” were intellectually our peers, or if that happened much latter (around 75,000 years ago or so).
I remember reading that scientists were going to use DNA analysis to more exactly determine how and when early humans migrated from Africa through the rest of the world. Did that happen?
