Dans Science du 28 janvier 2011: sortie d'Afrique de l'Homo Sapiens autour de - 125 000 ans ( à revoir)

Le Monde - 29 janvier 2011

Commentaires:
Ce n'est pas un nouveau scénario puisqu'il figure déjà dans le site de la Bradshaw Foundation. Mais cela remet en question le position du projet Génographic.

 

Science 28 January 2011:
Vol. 331 no. 6016 pp. 453-456
DOI: 10.1126/science.1199113

• Report

The Southern Route “Out of Africa”: Evidence for an Early Expansion of Modern Humans into Arabia

1. Simon J. Armitage¹,
2. Sabah A. Jasim²,
3. Anthony E. Marks³,
4. Adrian G. Parker⁴,
5. Vitaly I. Usik⁵, and
6. Hans-Peter Uerpmann⁶,*

+ Author Affiliations

1. ¹Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK.
2. ²Directorate of Antiquities, Department of Culture and Information, Government of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
3. ³Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University, 3225 Daniel Avenue, Heroy Building 408, Dallas, TX 75275, USA.
4. ⁴Department of Anthropology and Geography, School of Social Sciences and Law, Oxford Brookes University, Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK.
5. ⁵Archaeological Museum, Institute of Archaeology, National Academy of Sciences, B. Khmelnitsky Street, 15, 01030 Kiev, Ukraine.
6. ⁶Center for Scientific Archaeology, Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen, Rümelinstraße 23, 72070 Tübingen, Germany.

1. *To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: hans-peter.uerpmann@uni-tuebingen.de

Abstract

The timing of the dispersal of anatomically modern humans (AMH) out of Africa is a fundamental question in human evolutionary studies. Existing data suggest a rapid coastal exodus via the Indian Ocean rim around 60,000 years ago. We present evidence from Jebel Faya, United Arab Emirates, demonstrating human presence in eastern Arabia during the last interglacial. The tool kit found at Jebel Faya has affinities to the late Middle Stone Age in northeast Africa, indicating that technological innovation was not necessary to facilitate migration into Arabia. Instead, we propose that low eustatic sea level and increased rainfall during the transition between marine isotope stages 6 and 5 allowed humans to populate Arabia. This evidence implies that AMH may have been present in South Asia before the Toba eruption (1).