Archaeologists unearth 600,000-year-old evidence of Britain's early inhabitants

[Judi Lynn]

New finds have indicated that some of Britain’s earliest people lived in the Canterbury suburbs.

According to the research, led by the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, archaeological discoveries made on the outskirts of Canterbury, Kent (England) confirm the presence of early humans in southern Britain between 560,000 and 620,000 years ago, making it one of the earliest known Palaeolithic sites in northern Europe.

Researchers have now used contemporary dating techniques using radiometric dating, infrared-radiofluorescence (IR-RF) dating, and controlled excavations of the site. The site was initially discovered in the 1920s when laborers discovered handaxes in an old riverbed.

In a study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the researchers have confirmed the presence of Homo heidelbergensis, an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human which existed during the Middle Pleistocene and an ancestor of Neanderthals. Homo heidelbergensis is thought to have descended from the African Homo erectus during the first early expansions of hominins out of Africa beginning roughly 2 million years ago.

More:
https://arkeonews.net/archaeologists-unearth-600000-year-old-evidence-of-britains-early-inhabitants/

[Judi Lynn]

1. Earliest Hand Axes In Britain Were Not Crafted By Homo Sapiens

These flint butchering tools found in southern England are far older than our species.
author
TOM HALE
Senior Journalist

Jun 22, 2022 8:57 AM

Flint axes dating back to around 600,000 years ago provide hard evidence of thriving communities in southern Britain earlier than thought – but we’re not talking about our species, Homo Sapiens. Instead, these bone scraping tools were likely made by Homo heidelbergensis, an extinct ancestor of Neanderthals known for his heavy brow and crafty skills.

As reported in the journal Royal Society Open Science this week, the relics have recently been studied by a team of archaeologists at the University of Cambridge, the University of Kent, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

The artifacts were initially discovered in the suburbs of Canterbury in the 1920s by local workers, but a modern technique known as infrared-radiofluorescence (IR-RF) dating has finally revealed their true age. This remarkable technique is able to tell when certain minerals at the site were last exposed to sunlight, thereby exposing when the objects were most likely buried.

This revealed that the tools date to around 560,000 and 620,000 years ago, over 300,000 years before our species, H. Sapien, had even evolved. This was also a time when Britain was still connected to mainland Europe.

More:
https://www.iflscience.com/earliest-hand-axes-in-britain-were-not-crafted-by-homo-sapiens-64159

[czarjak]

2. All that durned fancy learnin'?

[Judi Lynn]

3. You'd never know, that's for sure.