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- [Narrator 1] The missing Peking Man fossils

are one of the great longstanding mysteries

in the history of human evolution.

The Peking Man fossils

were a set of 200 Homo erectus fossils

excavated from a cave in China,

during the 1920s and 1930s.

During World War II,

Chinese authorities packed up the fossils

and sent them to a Marine base in the US for safekeeping,

but they vanished along the way,

never to be seen again.

However, new evidence suggests

that the fossils may finally have been found.

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During excavations, 34 miles southwest

of Peking, Beijing, China,

between 1929 and 1937,

researchers discovered a number of partial skulls

of the species, Homo erectus.

The hominids, are thought to have live

around 400,000 years ago,

and came to be known as Peking Man.

In 1921, Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson

was visiting Dragon Bone Hill,

when he was taken by a local resident

to see a cave full of dragon bones,

Andersson immediately recognized them as fossils.

Later in the 1920s,

paleontologists discovered the teeth and bones

of primitive humans in the same caves.

By the time excavations ended on the site,

at least 12 individuals were represented in the assemblage.

These remains estimated to be about a million years old.

This was an extremely significant find,

pushing hominid activity in Northeast Asia

back hundreds of thousands of years

earlier than previously thought.

This caused a sensation in China

and throughout the world at the time.

A hundred years ago,

the known human family tree was fairly scant,

as scientists had then only discovered

three extinct species of hominids,

Neanderthals in Europe,

Homo erectus in Indonesia,

and the controversial Africanus in South Africa.

Canadian anthropologist Davidson Black

was convinced that the Chinese fossils,

constituted a new hominid species

and should be added to the list,

this was named, more commonly known as "Peking Man."

The original fossils were being studied

at the Peking Union Medical College in 1941,

when Chinese authorities,

realizing that a Japanese invasion was imminent

and worried what might happen

to the country's most important fossil collection,

decided to act.

They packed up the fossils

ready to be smuggled out to the United States,

who had agreed to take them

to the American Museum of Natural History in New York,

for as long as hostilities persisted.

The bones were seen in December, 1941,

when they were packed into crates and loaded onto trucks,

ready to be handed over to US Marines,

stationed in China at the beginning of the war.

An eyewitness account by Ms. Mary Ferguson,

an employee of the Union Medical College in Peking,

testified to the fact

that the crates had indeed been placed

on the Marine vehicle

for removal to the Marine barracks in Peking.

According to one source,

"It was intended that the crates containing the fossils

were to be transported in metal containers to the US,

aboard the transit ship of President Harrison

from the Port of Qinhuangdao,

near the Marine Base Camp of Holcomb,

the President Harrison

encountered Japanese warships, ran aground,

and never reached its destination."

After that, there is nothing,

the fossils seemed to disappear off the face of the Earth.

Despite one of the most intensive searches

in the history of archeology

and substantial rewards being offered,

no verifiable evidence for the whereabouts

of these important historical objects was ever discovered.

Although no one knew what had happened

to the remains of Peking Man,

there were a number of theories.

The first, and perhaps most obvious,

was that Japanese soldiers might have intercepted the trucks

and taken the boxes back to Japan with them.

The second is that the bones are still in China somewhere,

perhaps buried by someone who found them,

before they reached the Marines,

and didn't recognize their significance.

The third explanation,

is that the bones are in the United States,

the Marines having successfully carried out their mission,

but have been subsequently lost.

In 1949, excavations resumed,

and since then, archeologists have uncovered

numerous additional fossils and stone tools.

They now date Peking Man inhabitation of the site,

to between 780,000 and 400,000 years ago,

much more recent than originally believed.

Researchers who also recognized that Peking Man,

was not a new species,

but actually a member of the species Homo erectus.

All evolutionary branches from this species,

eventually died out,

the last, the European Neanderthals,

surviving up to as recently as 35,000 years ago,

but there was still no news of what had happened

to the original fossils.

Then in April, 2010, paleoanthropologist Lee Berger,

of the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa,

received an email from a man named Paul Bowen,

the son of a former US Marine Richard Bowen,

who had been stationed in China

at the end of World War II.

The Senior Mr. Bowen

had been a Corporal attached to the 1st Pioneer Battalion

of the 1st Marine Division,

and was one of the last soldiers to leave China

during the 1940 movement

of the Communist Chinese in Northern China,

and subsequent evacuation of foreign military personnel.

In his email, Paul Bowen described what his father told him.

"Day after day, the war was getting hotter and closer.

South of us, was mostly overrun.

The city was now under siege

by the communist Eighth Route Army,

with nationalist gunboats shelling them over our camp.

One day, a group of them asked us to surrender,

saying that they had 250,000 men.

to prove the point, that night,

thousands of fires were lit by them

on the adjacent hills and high ground,

it looked like Christmas time.

From that time on, we started digging foxholes at night,

and napping during the day.

I had a 30-caliber machine gun

and our lieutenant would from time to time,

change our crossfire.

in this nightly digging process,

we dug a lot of holes.

In one of them, we found a box that was full of bones.

At night, it gave us a little scare

and we filled in that hole and dug another.

Shortly after we evacuated the area,

we went back,

and then back to the United States,

with the 1st Marine Division colors."

Berger was understandably astonished at this information.

In subsequent correspondence with Berger,

Paul Bowen elaborated on details of the incident.

"The camp he was at was Camp Holcomb

near the Manchurian border,

this is the last place the bones were known to be.

The box he found he describes

as being of US Marine Footlocker size,

and it was full of small bones,

it is beach dunes,

the key would be to find a local there,

who could accurately place the barracks and TT1's,

which was the BAR the Marines used.

The only thing I ask is that if anything comes of this,

my father gets some credit.

He is in his eighties now,

he has talked of this for decades."

If Bowen's account is true,

and most researchers believe it is,

then the metal containers containing the fossils,

did indeed reach the Marine barracks in Peking

and then went by train to Camp Holcomb,

but obviously, not in time

to be loaded on a ship to evacuate.

Understandably, getting people out was the priority,

in what was surely a confused

and chaotic evacuation from China,

as war broke out across the Pacific.

It's certainly possible that in all this confusion,

the officer in charge of the fossils,

chose to bury them

near one of the permanent structures in the camp,

the brick barracks for later retrieval.

Investigations at the location in November, 2010,

soon discovered something extremely discouraging,

Camp Holcomb had been located extremely close

to the highly-developed part of the docks,

and the area was now heavily industrialized

with a few original structures from the 1940s remaining.

The investigation team surveyed the area also,

and with the help of a local historian,

managed to work out a few possible locations for the site,

where the event took place In 1947.

Unfortunately, one of these sites

had been built over by warehouses and parking lots,

belonging to the provincial food export and import company,

however, the remaining locations

were all underneath a large parking area and roadway.

If the excavations of the foundations that these roads

and lots was not too deep,

the researchers believed

the crates with the fossils may survive underneath.

So, the lost fossils Pekin Man,

may well lie buried under a few feet of asphalt,

or they may have been destroyed

in the construction of the warehouses and car parks,

but the only way to find out for sure

is to excavate the area,

however, researchers are hopeful,

as the area is expected to undergo a large redevelopment

in the near future.

When this happens,

local officials at the Cultural Heritage Office,

will be monitoring any excavations with interest,

in the hope that the bones of Peking Man,

will finally turn up.

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- [Narrator 1] The question of when

and how the continent of Australia was first populated,

has always been a bit of a puzzle to archeologists,

but recently, some new light

has been shed on the problem.

An international team of archeologists,

geographers, ecologists, and computer scientists,

mapped the probable superhighways

that led to the first peopling of the Australian continent,

around 50,000 to 70,000 years ago.

The team generated a fascinating map,

which reveals these migration superhighways

traversed by early humans in Australia,

which mysteriously bear striking similarities

to Australia's modern highways and stock route.

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Some researchers have also suggested a connection

between these newly discovered superhighways

and the mysterious Aboriginal Dreaming Tracks.

Over the years, there have been many theories

about where the indigenous ancestors

first settled in Australia,

tens of thousands of years ago,

but evidence for this activity is extremely scarce.

Only a very small number of archeological sites

date from these early times,

when sea levels were much lower

and Northern Australia was joined by land bridge

to present-day Southern New Guinea and Eastern Indonesia,

and people and animals

were able to walk at various times

across to Tasmania from the mainland.

This mega-continent, known as Sahul,

was 30% larger than Australia is today.

One of these early archeological sites

was at the now-dry Lake Mungo

in Western New South Wales.

Here, in 1968, Earth scientist Jim Bowler

uncovered the cremated remains of an Aboriginal woman

in an eroding dune,

close to the shoreline of the lake.

In 1974, the ancient remains of a man were found nearby,

both of these remains now called Mungo Lady and Mungo Man,

were found to date back to staggering 40,000 years,

thus, doubling scientific estimates

of how long Aboriginal people had lived in Australia.

The amazing discoveries at Lake Mungo,

reveal that Aboriginal history

stretched back at times so remote

that the only humans in Europe were Neanderthals,

and people had not yet reached America.

By about 70,000 years ago, modern humans, Homo sapiens,

began moving into Southeast Asia,

where they would probably have encountered

existing groups of archaic humans,

like Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis,

often referred to as the Hobbits,

and possibly also the mysterious Denisovans.

In May, 2021, it was announced that researchers

had to use supercomputers

to simulate 125 billion possible travel routes

and reconstruct the most likely super highways.

The first humans to arrive in Australia,

used to navigate across this new land,

more than 65,000 years ago.

The international team of scientists

who undertook the research,

was led by researchers

from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence

for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, CABAH,

and recently revealed some of their methods to the press,

they said, "We think people navigated in new territories,

much as people do today,

by focusing on prominent land features

protruding above the relative flatness

of the Australian continent.

To map these features,

we built the most complete digital elevation model

for Sahul ever constructed,

including areas now underwater.

We used this digital elevation model

to understand what was visible to early travelers.

Essentially, from each point in the continent,

we asked, 'What can you see from here?'

This moving window

calculates the largest viewshed map ever created.

When our virtual travelers move,

they reorient based on visible terrain

everywhere they go."

For their work,

the researchers created an imaginary traveler,

a 25-year-old woman,

carrying 10 kilograms of supplies

to traverse the landscape.

They collected all the various pieces of data

they accumulated into a mega-model,

known as From Everywhere to Everywhere, FETE,

and created over 125 billion possible pathways

from every spot on the continent,

to everywhere else.

Each route represented

the easiest way to move from one location to another,

obviously, the researchers

could not possibly examine every path

of the 125 billion pathways that they had created,

so they reduced the number

by comparing all plausible pathways

with the distribution

of the oldest known archeological sites

on the ancient continent,

providing weighted possibilities for each path.

This work produced a scale of pathways,

going from the most likely

to the least likely chosen paths.

The most likely pathways in the map above,

are what the researchers called the "superhighways"

of the first Indigenous populations on the continent.

The team's conclusion

drawn from their computer-generated maps,

is that the early population

spread across the now-submerged wide plains

on the western and eastern margins of the continent,

and through to the region

that now forms the Gulf of Carpentaria,

the large shallow sea,

which now connects Australia to New Guinea.

The nagging question of whether there was evidence

that anyone had actually used

these computer-identified highways in the remote past,

was soon answered by their research.

A large number of archeological sites in Australia,

known to be at least 35,000 years old,

were located on, or near these superhighways,

and many tracks also coincided

with ancient trade routes known from the oral histories

of the Indigenous people,

all agreed with genetic and linguistic studies

used to trace early human migrations.

But these superhighways

may well have been much more

than routes used for the initial peopling of Sahul.

A number of these superhighways

identified by the research team,

follow well-known Aboriginal trade routes,

which cross the country.

These include the route

from Cape York to South Australia via Birdsville,

used by traders of Pituri-native tobacco,

and the trade of Kimberley Baler shell

into central Australia.

There are also obvious similarities

between the researchers map of ancient highways

and the most common

trading and stock routes used by early Europeans,

which is not surprising,

as they followed established routes,

long used by the Aboriginal peoples.

The research's groundbreaking work on these superhighways,

has impressed the archeological community,

Archeologist Kyle Bocinsky

of the University of Montana Missoula said,

"This is a really compelling illustration

of the power of using these simulation techniques

at a huge continental scale,

to understand how people navigate landscapes,

its impressive, extreme computing."

One intriguing aspect of this new research

is that it has revealed major routes

that cut across several dry areas in Australia's center,

and in the northeastern State of Queensland.

The existence of paths in such locations,

would appear to challenge the long-held view

that the earliest people on the continent

avoided the deserts.

CABAH Deputy Director,

distinguished Professor Sean Ulm

from James Cook University,

commented on the importance of the research team's work

in revealing the significance of landscape

to the native inhabitants of the continent.

He said, "Australia is not only the driest,

but also the flattest populated continent on Earth.

Our research shows that prominent landscape features

and water sources,

were critical for people to navigate

and survive on the continent.

In many Aboriginal societies,

landscape features are believed to have being created

by ancestral beings during The Dreaming.

Every ridge line, hill, river, beach, and water source

is named, storied, and inscribed

into the very fabric of societies,

emphasizing the intimate relationship

between people and place.

The landscape is literally woven into people's lives

and their histories.

It seems that these relationships

between people in the country,

probably date back

to the earliest peopling of the continent."

This quote brings in a question of a connection

between these newly revealed superhighways

and Aboriginal Dreaming Tracks.

to the Aborigine, a Dreaming Track

or Song Line, as it is also known,

is a route taken by ancestral heroes in the Dreamtime,

in which all Aboriginal culture has its roots,

and before, which in their minds,

the Earth did not exist.

As with the ancient superhighways,

these mostly invisible paths or tracks,

usually connect Aboriginal sacred sites.

In the Dream Time,

groups of ancestral beings journeyed across the land,

performing mighty deeds,

and creating the living species and features

of the desert landscape.

The adventure of these ancestors,

also referred to as totemic ancestors,

are chronicled in sacred songs, stories, and rituals.

These totemic ancestors,

also establish the rules of Aboriginal religion,

law, moral systems, and social life.

In the mind of the Aborigine,

Dreamtime is a true record of how the landscape was formed,

a landscape which is still inhabited

by the spirits of their Ancestor Beings.

By reenacting the myths in the Dreamtime

in song, story, and ceremony,

the Aborigines keep their ancestors' rules, beliefs,

and relationships with the landscape alive.

The massive rock form of Ayers Rock, Uluru

in the local Anangu language,

is an isolated sandstone outcrop,

rising 1,140 feet above the red desert plain

in the Northern Territory of Central Australia,

208 miles southwest of Alice Springs.

This sacred place is seen by the Anangu,

as a living record of the Dreamtime activities

of their ancestors,

and the appearance and origin

of every feature of the giant rock

is present on the mental map,

carried around by the Anangu people of the area.

One reason why the local Anangu population,

prefer tourists not to climb the rock,

is that the hiking path

crosses one of the many

traditional Dreaming Tracks on the site.

Hopefully, future work on possible connections

between these fascinating superhighways

and Aboriginal Dreaming Tracks,

might reveal important insights

into the spiritual nature of both.

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- [Narrator 1] Archeologists digging

in the Atapuerca Mountains in Northern Spain,

have uncovered the fossilized remains

of an archaic group of humans,

different to any other ever seen.

The bones are among the oldest Homo fossils

ever found in Europe,

and some researchers have speculated,

that they may represent

the elusive common ancestral of Neanderthals, Denisovans,

and modern humans.

Recent DNA analysis of these ancient bones,

the oldest ever examined,

revealed some fascinating facts,

but although this may be the oldest

human genetic material ever analyzed,

a recent examination of permafrost preserved

1.6-million-year-old mammoth teeth from Siberia,

has shattered the record for the world's oldest DNA.

This work has inevitably led to the question,

could scientists bring dinosaurs back to life?

The Atapuerca Site.

The Atapuerca Mountains are a small row of hills

that lie just south of the Cantabrian Mountain Range,

which runs across Northern Spain,

just south of the Bay of Biscay.

In 1896, work began on a small rail line,

which was to be constructed through the hills,

which was to connect Balboa's Steel Mines

with mines to the southeast.

During the work, a series of limestone caves was exposed,

but the rail line was soon abandoned,

and although one large cut

eventually became a limestone quarry,

nothing more was heard about the newly exposed caves

for almost 70 years.

In the 1960s, a small amount of archeological work

was carried out there,

but it wasn't until 1972,

after cavers had discovered the caves,

and began working exploring them

that their importance was realized.

The discovery in 1972

of Bronze Age artifacts by Swiss cavers

attracted the interest of archeologists,

and excavations were soon begun at the site.

The archeological sites in the Atapuerca Mountains,

soon revealed a rich fossil record

of the earliest human beings in Europe,

from nearly 1 million years ago,

right up to the Roman Period.

The most astonishing discoveries

were made in the Pit of Bones.

Over the years,

this pit has yielded thousands of ancient human bones,

ranging in age from 350,000 years,

to over a million years old.

These hominids inhabited the caves

before fully evolved Neanderthals,

some were known Neanderthal ancestors,

but in 1994, sensational discoveries from the Pit of Bones,

made the world sit up and take notice.

These enigmatic remains were much older in date

than those previously discovered,

and seemed to have belonged

to however came before the Neanderthals,

at first, thought by researchers to be Homo erectus.

The Mysterious Ancestor.

These mysterious ancestors were about five feet six tall,

and used very basic tools,

but close examination of the bones

revealed a disturbing detail,

they were cut and fractured,

and appeared to have been cannibalized.

The largest skeletal remains

came from at least six individuals,

and dated to at least 800,000 years ago.

They're similar in some ways to modern humans, Homo sapiens,

as well as the now-extinct human relatives,

like Neanderthals and Denisovans,

but the remains were different enough

to resist classification as any known species.

Many believe that the bones are a missing link,

the elusive common ancestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans,

and modern humans,

and have been named by scholars, Homo antecessor,

the name comes from the Latin word for predecessor.

Initial interpretations based on physical shape

and appearance of the fossils,

concluded that Homo antecessor was the last common ancestor

to modern humans and Neanderthals.

The DNA Discovery.

A recent study of the DNA

from some of the Atapuerca bones,

was published in the Journal "Nature."

The study was groundbreaking,

as it examined the single-oldest sample

of human genetic material ever analyzed.

Researchers used a technique called mass spectrometry,

to sequence ancient proteins from dental enamel,

and were thus able to determine the position

of Homo antecessor in the human family tree.

This new molecular method

enabled scientists to recover molecular evidence

to precisely reconstruct human evolution

from much farther back in time than ever before.

Lead author of the new paper, Enrico Cappellini,

Associate Producer at the Globe Institute,

University of Copenhagen, commented,

"Much of what we know so far

is based either on the results of ancient DNA analysis,

or on observations of the shape

and the physical structure of fossils.

Because of the chemical degradation of DNA over time,

the oldest human DNA retrieved so far is dated,

at no more than approximately 400,000 years.

Now, the analysts of ancient proteins

with mass spectrometry,

allow us to overcome these limits.

The researchers sequenced the ancient proteins of the enamel

of an 800,000-year-old antecessor tooth,

using the proteins to decrypt the portion of genetic code

that created them.

They found that Homo antecessor's DNA,

was too similar to fit on the same branch

of the evolutionary tree,

as humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans."

The researchers concluded

that the bones from Atapuerca,

probably belonged to what they described as a sister species

of the shared ancestor

that led to the evolution of modern humans,

and our extinct hominid relatives.

In a statement, co-author of the study,

José María Bermúdez de Castro,

who was also Scientific co-Director

of the excavations Atapuerca said,

"I am happy that the protein study provides evidence

that the Homo antecessor species,

may be closely related

to the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens,

Neanderthals, and Denisovans.

The features shared by Homo antecessor,

with these hominins clearly appeared much earlier

than previously thought.

Even if Homo antecessor proves not to be the missing link

in human evolution,

the study's use of the new molecular method

is extremely significant in its reconstruction

of human evolution.

Who knows what fascinating results

this method will turn up in the future."

The World's Oldest DNA.

In February, 2021,

a sensational article published in the Journal "Nature,"

revealed that mammoth teeth

preserved in Eastern Siberian permafrost,

had produced the oldest DNA on record.

In fact, the work nearly doubled the record

for the oldest genome ever sequenced.

DNA researchers have believed for some time

that ancient DNA under the right circumstances,

and if the right sample could be found,

it can survive beyond 1 million years.

The problem is, that as soon as an organism dies,

its chromosomes break into pieces

that get shorter over time.

In the end, these DNA strands become so small

that even if they could be extracted,

they would have lost any information they contained.

The DNA comes from three mammoth teeth discovered in Siberia

in the early 1970s by a Russian paleontologist.

Scientists estimate that the youngest of the three teeth

is around 500,000 to 800,000 years old,

but the other two, are far more ancient,

dating back to between 1 million

and 1.2 million years old.

The further back in time DNA records can go,

the more researchers are able to learn about

how evolution works.

Two of the new studies mammoth genomes

have been assigned to the lineage

that later gave rise to woolly mammoths.

Fascinatingly, however,

DNA from the oldest of the three teeth,

nicknamed "Krestovka" by the researchers

after the river near which it was found,

appears to belong to a previously unknown genetic lineage,

one, that about 1.5 million years ago,

split from the lineage containing the two other teeth.

Could scientists bring dinosaurs back to life?

Due to the rapid advances in DNA in recent years,

exemplified by both research on bones

from the Atapuerca Mountian site,

and the study of the Siberian mammoth teeth,

there has been much speculation about the possibility

of recreating dinosaurs from their DNA,

but will such "Jurassic Park"-style recreations

ever be possible?

In the movie, the dinosaur resurrection begins

with a DNA-filed mosquito

that has been preserved in amber for millions of years.

It's actually not as farfetched as it sounds.

Theoretically, dinosaur DNA could be recovered

from ancient blood-sucking insects trapped in amber,

and serves as a genetic blueprint

for recreating these extinct animals,

but it's not so straightforward,

as Dr. Susie Maidment,

a research at the Natural History Museum in London says,

"We do have mosquitoes and biting flies

from the time of the dinosaurs

and they do preserve in amber,

but when amber preserves things,

it tends to preserve the husk, not the soft tissues,

so you don't get blood preserved

inside mosquitoes in amber."

But the search for dinosaur DNA,

has other avenues open to it,

blood residue has been discovered inside ancient insects,

though, they weren't found in amber.

According to Dr. Maidment, "A couple of years ago,

a paper came out about a mosquito from the Eocene,

that's around 45 million years ago,

so around 20 million years

after the dinosaurs died out.

The mosquito was preserved in lake sediments

and had a red pigment in its abdomen.

When they tested that pigment chemically,

they discovered hemoglobin-derived porphyrins.

The idea that we may one day

still find a mosquito or biting fly

from the age of the dinosaurs

with some parts of the blood still preserved

is not outrageous,

but the fact is that dinosaurs became extinct

about 66 million years ago,

and with such a vast amount of time having passed,

it's extremely unlikely

that any dinosaur DNA would remain today.

Unlikely, but not impossible,

which is why some scientists

will continue to search for it."

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- [Narrator 1] The recent discovery of an isolated,

ancient human skull

in the natural Marcel Loubens Gypsum Cave in Northern Italy,

has baffled the archeologists.

The skull was discovered at the top of a vertical shaft,

which could only be reached by a 40-foot,

almost impossible climb.

How and when did it get there?

Whose was it?

In 2015, cave explorers were climbing slowly and carefully

through a vertical passage of a natural gypsum cave

near Bologna, Northern Italy,

when they discovered something extraordinary,

a human skull, complete apart from a missing jawbone.

The cave is named Marcel Loubens,

after a French speleologist,

who died in 1952

at the age of 29 in an accident,

while exploring the cave system there,

it's situated in the central area

of what is known colorfully, as Hell's Sinkhole.

Archeologists were alerted and recovered the skull

from the deep in the Marcel Loubens Cave,

at the top of a 40-foot vertical shaft,

which was only accessible with special climbing equipment.

The team had to climb upwards

from the lower-lying Meandro della cattiveria,

Maze of Malice,

about 85 feet underground,

and named due to the difficulties of moving through it.

The cranium was placed in a vertical position,

partly embedded in a loamy matrix.

However, because the access to the place

where the skull was found was so difficult,

consisting of numerous passages, not wide enough

to allow more than one person to squeeze through,

the recovery of the remains was delayed

until the 7th of June, 2017.

It was recovered by a team of a dozen volunteers,

including a number of speliologists

from the GSM-USB Bologna Caving Club.

Professor Wolfgang Stinnesbeck of Heidelberg University,

highlighted the difficulties involved

in the recovery of the skull.

"Speleological reconnaissance is still a dangerous matter,

which requires lots of respect for nature,

and more so, for these remote environments

where you are essentially on your own."

Archeologist Maria Giovanna Belcastro,

led the team that undertook the work

of reconstructing the story of the skull.

Immediately, the team noticed mysterious marks on the bone,

which could have been caused

during the removal of soft tissues after death,

perhaps as part of a funeral ritual.

There was also damage to the skull itself,

an encrusted sediment on the bone.

This practice is not unusual in prehistory

and has been documented at other Neolithic burials in Italy.

At Re Tiberio Cave in Northern Italy,

the long arm and leg bones

of around 17 Neolithic human skeletons

were arranged in order,

but their heads were missing,

indicating that the body parts may have been separated

and rearranged after death.

There were also other Neolithic remains

found in neighboring caves,

which showed evidence of cranial scrape marks

that were also made after death.

The research team used CT scanning to analyze the skull,

which revealed that it belonged to a woman,

who was between the ages of 24 and 35 when she died.

The results of radiocarbon of the bone,

showed that she was not the victim

of a relatively recent accident in the caves,

as some newspapers had speculated,

in fact, she had lived between 3630 and 3380 BC,

during the New Stone Age or Neolithic Period.

Further analysis of the young woman's skull

revealed odd details.

There was a dent in the bone,

which showed signs of healing,

indicating that whatever caused it

happened when she was still alive.

The team believed this may be made by force

with primitive tools,

as they found parallel grooves below it,

could this woman have undergone

some kind of prehistoric cranial surgery?

The idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds.

A crude surgical procedure known as trepanation,

which involves making a hole

in the skull of a living person,

by either drilling, cutting,

or scraping away layers of bone with a sharp tool,

was employed during the Neolithic and later,

in fact, thousands of ancient skulls

show signs of trepidation,

and they have been discovered at archeological sites

across the world,

including cultures as diverse as ancient Greece,

North and South America, Africa, Polynesia,

and the Far East.

The earliest clear evidence of the procedure,

dates back to around 7,000 years ago.

The research team also discovered another curiosity

in the Neolithic woman's skull,

an area of red ochre pigment.

This was actually found on the dent,

and could have been put there

for therapeutic or symbolic reasons.

The young woman had obviously led a challenging life,

and was not in the best of health,

though perhaps that was not so unusual

during the Neolithic Period.

the team discovered minute holes on the top of her skull,

which could be related to inflammation,

possibly caused from chronic amnesia.

Two dense spots rose her found on her skull,

which the team believed were benign tumors.

Furthermore, her tooth enamel was underdeveloped,

signifying that she had suffered from health problems

in early childhood,

when her permanent teeth were developing.

Some researchers put forward the idea,

that the marks on the young woman's skull,

could be attributable to the action of animals.

However, the research stated in their report on the skull,

that this could not be the explanation.

"The interpretation of the injuries

and the composition of the sediment

covering and filling the skull,

made it possible for us to hypothesize

some potential scenarios," they said.

"The lesions observed in the cranial vault,

may be due to intentional human intervention,

before and around death

on the young female corpse,

at least her head,

and non-human tap harmonic processes occurred after death.

None of the lesions observed are attributable

to animal actions, involving teeth,

gnawing, nails, and claws,

trampling and scratching."

But it was the other damage to her skull

and the presence of encrusted sediment inside it,

which revealed the most

about what might have happened to her

after her burial.

Using this evidence,

the researcher team reconstructed

what they believed to have happened

to the skull after death.

After the body of the woman was laid to rest

during a funeral ritual in a burial place,

somewhere in the cave system,

the skull rolled away,

probably moved by water and mud,

perhaps during heavy rainfall or a mudslide,

down the slope of a sinkhole,

and into the cave.

Later, continual sinkhole activity over 5,000 years,

created the modern structure for the cave,

with the skull still preserved within.

There is, in fact, some precedence

for such an unlikely-sounding occurrence.

Wolfgang Stinnesbeck and his team,

recently investigated a partial female skeleton,

known as Chan Hol 3, near Tulum, Mexico,

in a submerged cave system.

Dating back almost 10,000 years old,

these remains are much older

than those from the Italian cave,

indeed, they are among the oldest

of such finds in the Americas.

Stinnesbeck's team used methods

similar to those employed by the Italians,

and came up with surprisingly similar results.

They found that the woman had survived disease

and head trauma,

before being buried in the cave,

which was dry at the time

because of the lower sea levels.

as the waters rose, most of the caves were flooded,

However, not everyone is completely convinced

by the research team's version of events.

Thomas Terberger an archeologist

at the Lower Saxony State Office

for Cultural Heritage in Hanover, Germany,

believes some aspects of the discovery

are still unexplained.

"I have the feelings, the authors themselves,

who did a very good job,

are not a hundred percent sure about this.

It's not always easy to distinguish between striations

caused by transport in sediment and rocky ground

and cut marks.

Though the explanation that the skull

simply rolled to its final destination in the cave system

is largely accepted,

one wonders if perhaps another explanation

for the fate of this young woman exists,

both in life and death.

Perhaps, there was someone else involved in what happened,

an unnaturally agile individual,

who was able to place the skull

in its final resting place in the cave,

but was unable to get out,

could their remains like hidden somewhere in the cave system

waiting to be discovered by future cave explorers?

Perhaps when this individual's remains are found,

they will shed important light on what actually did happen

in Marcel Loubens Cave,

over 4 1/2 thousand years ago."

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator 1] In September of 2019,

it was announced to the world

that scientists analyzing the DNA

of an extinct group of hominins

that was discovered around 10 years ago,

known as the Denisovans,

had discovered what they may have looked like.

For years, these close relatives of Neanderthals

had been identified by their DNA

from a handful of fragmentary fossils,

the study was published in the Journal "Cell,"

but recently, scientists developed a method

of assembling clues about anatomy from ancient genomes,

which has enabled them

to compose a rough image of a young girl,

who lived at Denisova Cave in Siberia, Russia,

75,000 years ago.

The results reveal that Denisovans

were a broad-faced species,

somewhat similar in appearance to the Neanderthals,

but with some distinctive differences,

such as a wider jaw and skull.

(page swishing)

Geneticist, Liran Carmel

of the Hebrew University Jerusalem said,

"While other researchers

had worked to map anatomical features

obtained from the information hidden in our DNA,

his team had taken a different approach."

"We didn't rely on the DNA sequence per se,

but from the sequence,

we used a technique,

which allows you to reconstruct gene activity patterns

in these ancient individuals,

so we can compare the way the genes work

in the different human groups.

Evolutionary speaking, it's well-known

that many anatomical

or physiological differences between closely related groups,

are attributed to changes in gene activity patterns,

this is exactly what we can find using our technique."

Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist

at the Natural History Museum in London,

was not involved in the study,

but believes that the reconstruction

of the Denisovan anatomy

is a pioneering piece of research,

which at first glance,

seems almost like science fiction.

"This is exciting work,

pushing the boundaries

of what it can be gleaned from ancient genomes."

The technique, which consists of mapping

methylation patterns in DNA

to determine gene expression and anatomy,

is a relatively new one,

and at the moment, cannot show us with complete accuracy

what a Denisovan looked like.

Before applying their method to Denisovans,

Carmel and his team

had first tested whether it could effectively

predict the anatomy of Neanderthals,

which is known from many hundreds of fossils.

The team's research found 33 Neanderthal traits

that could theoretically be predicted

from methylation patterns

their results accurately predicted 29 of those traits.

A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

arose for Carmel and his team,

while their completed study was waiting to be peer-reviewed.

This was the discovery of an actual Denisovan jaw,

reported to the media in May, 2019.

The 160,000-year-old specimen,

which contained half of a lower jaw,

with two complete teeth,

had in fact been discovered in 1980 by a local monk,

in Baishiya Karst Cave

high on the Tibetan Plateau in China.

The find was passed on to the university,

and remained there until the 2010s,

when Archaeologist Dongju Zhang and her colleagues

began studying it.

The problem with the bones,

was that it was so old

no DNA could be extracted from it.

However, Jean-Jacques Hublin,

the Director of the Max Planck Institute's

Department of Human Evolution

found a way around this problem.

Hublin and his team,

were able to use the latest protein analysis

to date one of its teeth

and to link it genetically to Denisovan specimens

found in Siberia.

Hublin said of the extraordinary find,

"To have beings, even if a little archaic,

living at 11,000 feet on the Tibetan Plateau

160,000 years ago,

that's something

that no one could have imagined, until today.

From my point of view,

it's confirmation of a working hypothesis

I've had for a while.

In the all-Chinese and East Asian hominin fossils

between 350 to 50,000 years ago,

are probably Denisovan."

So, with the newly-studied jawbone,

Carmel and colleagues had a unique chance

to check their work against an actual Denisovan fossil.

Carmel said of the success of his team's analysis,

"This was very exciting for us.

When we submitted the paper to sell,

we only had a few teeth and a finger bone

to compare to our predictions.

We immediately went to check how it compared

to our predictions,

and we find a beautiful match,

so this was very reassuring for us."

But who actually wear the Denisovans?

And how are they connected to us?

(suspenseful music)

Thanks to recent discoveries in a Siberian cave,

a mysterious group of extinct humans,

known as the Denisovans

is helping to rewrite our understanding

of human evolution.

According to the latest studies,

these Denisovans co-existed

and mixed with modern humans in New Guinea,

until at least 30,000 years ago,

but perhaps as recently as 15,000 years ago,

a date that, if confirmed,

means Denisovans were a last known humans,

apart from ourselves to walk the Earth.

This incredible archeological site of Denisova Cave

in the Anuy River,

in the Altai Region of Siberia,

contains more than 20 layers of excavated artifacts,

indicating occupation by hominins,

as far back as 280,000 years ago,

to as recently as the Middle Ages.

Evidence of 13 separate occupations,

occurring between 125 and 30,000 years ago,

is attested by the presence of stone artifacts

dating to within this period.

Overlooking the Anuy River,

where herds of animals came to drink,

the site offered an incomparable vantage point

for spotting game and other humans,

as well as refuge from Siberian storms.

The cave lies near modern Russia's border with Mongolia,

China, and Kazakhstan.

Researchers believe that the cave was inhabited

by early modern humans, Homo sapiens,

and possibly Neanderthals at different times,

additionally, they have uncovered evidence of occupation

by a previously unknown group of hominins,

named the Denisovans,

who were neither modern humans nor Neanderthals.

In the 1970s and early 1980s,

Soviet archeologists began to excavate at the Denisova Cave,

discovering tens of thousands of stone tools

and fragments of animal bone,

many of which had been gnawed and digested by hyenas

or other carnivores that had inhabited the cave.

In 2010, a team of European and American scientists,

reported the sequencing

of the complete mitochondrial DNA genome

obtained from a specimen

found in the Denisova Cave in 2008.

The specimen, a finger bone from a small child

was dated to between 30 and 48,000 years ago.

Although the bone was discovered

in association with artifacts of the Mousterian industry,

the tool-making culture

traditionally associated with Neanderthals,

its mitochondrial DNA

showed nearly twice as many differences

from modern human mitochondrial DNA,

that are present in Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA.

These discoveries suggest that the Denisovan lineage,

branched off from some common ancestor

long before the lineage

that includes Neanderthals and modern humans.

The most recent common mitochondrial DNA

that could have been shared by these two lineages,

would've occurred around 1 million years ago.

Accordingly, the researchers have proposed

that Neanderthals, Homo sapiens,

and a third group

of genetically distinct hominins, the Denisovans,

inhabited the Altai Region at the same time,

around 40,000 years ago.

In another study published in 2010,

it was revealed that genetic material

removed from the nuclei of cells

taken from the same finger bone

was used to sequence the Denisovan nuclear genome.

Genetic analysis revealed that the finger bone,

as well as the tooth excavated from the cave in 2000,

belonged to two different,

but genetically comparable individuals,

and that these individuals

had substantial genetic differences

from Neanderthals and modern humans.

A comparison of the Denisovian nuclear genome

with those of Neanderthals and modern humans,

suggested that perhaps 4 to 6% of the material

in the Denisovan genome,

were also present

in the genomes of modern humans from Melanesia.

Such results suggested that the Denisovians

appeared throughout large parts of Eurasia,

and that they interbred with early modern humans.

(page swishing)

In August, 2018,

a paper published in the Journal "Nature",

described genome analysis of a bone discovered in the cave,

which revealed that a female,

who died there around 90,000 years ago

was half Neanderthal and half Denisovan.

This was the first time in history

that scientists had identified an ancient individual

whose parents belonged to distinct human groups.

Population geneticist

Pontus Skoglund of the Francis Crick Institute in London,

said of the discovery,

"To find a first-generation person of mixed ancestry

from these groups is absolutely extraordinary.

It's really great science,

coupled with a little bit of luck."

The researchers gave

the remarkable young woman a name, Denny.

Taking into account the patterns of genetic variation

in ancient to modern humans,

scientists already knew that Denisovans and Neanderthals

must have interbred,

and with Homo sapiens,

however, up until then,

no one had found

the first-generation offspring of such unions.

Scientists believed that although Neanderthals

and Denisovans would've bred with each other when they met,

such encounters were rare.

The majority of Neanderthal remains

have been discovered across Western Eurasia,

whilst Denisovans have thus far,

only been discovered in the Denisova Cave.

The two groups territories

did overlap in the Altai Mountains and possibly elsewhere,

but these areas would've been sparsely populated.

Scientists are still studying

the remains from Denisova Cave,

and they believe that they may have found signs

that modern humans inhabited the cave,

and possibly encountered these other groups.

In the cave's most recent deposits,

archeologists have discovered tools and jewelry,

crafted from ostrich eggshell,

and bones and teeth of deer and other animals

that look similar to artifacts associated

with the first Homo sapiens to reach Europe.

This was during a period

known as the Initial Upper Paleolithic,

which began around 50,000 years ago.

(page swishing)

The Russian archeologists in charge of the caves excavation

have proposed that the tools and jewelry

were made by Denisovans,

and suggested that the group possessed the capacity

for symbolic thinking.

However, most Western archeologists disagree,

believing that the artifacts

were made by early modern humans

whose remains have been found at another Siberian site,

and date to the Initial Upper Paleolithic.

A team of researchers

are currently searching the most recent sediments

of Denisova Cave for more hominin remains and DNA

that could help to find out who made the artifacts.

Comparable work at other archeological sites in Siberia,

including a number in the area of Denisova Cave,

could also produce answers,

but researchers have been hampered

by a lack a of fossil evidence of Denisovans.

According to Bence Viola,

a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto, Canada,

who has made a close study of all the remains says,

"All the Denisovan material fits in a very, very small box,

I've spent a lot of time

staring at these very small fragments and teeth,

I'm probably the only one who's seen it all."

Researchers are extending the search for Denisovans

across the continent,

where traces of their DNA

are found in many modern human populations.

They also hope to find out

the range of this mysterious group,

which could have stretched from Siberia to Oceana,

and also to record its meetings with other hominins,

including Homo sapiens and Neanderthals.

Scientists know how valuable it would be

to have larger fossil and DNA samples of the Denisovans,

who are still only known from fragmentary fossils

in a single cave site.

In 2017, Katerina Douka,

an archeological scientist at the Max Planck Institute

for the Science of Human History in Jana, Germany

and her team,

won $2.3 million in European Research Council funding

to expand the search for Denisovans,

to around 20 sites across Europe and Asia,

by scrutinizing another 30,000 to 40,000 bones.

"There are days I'm very hopeful,

and there are days where you go through a thousand bones

and find a thousand hyenas," says Douka,

"I have a feeling, China is the place to look."

Indeed, the distribution of Denisovan in modern humans

is mainly in a number of Chinese populations.

Some scientists have suggested that it's possible

that there might even be a Denisovan skeleton

already present in a museum collection somewhere in China.

For example, in 2017, paleoanthropologists

described the unusually large skulls of hominins

that had lived 105 to 125,000 years ago,

and were uncovered from a site

near the City of Sichuan in Central China.

Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist

at the Natural History Museum in London,

looked at age, location,

and distinct anatomy of the skeletons,

and wondered whether they might belong to Denisovans,

but thus far, none of the later archaic Chinese fossils

has yielded publishable ancient DNA sequences

to compare with those ancient DNA sequences

from the Denisova Cave.

Denisova Cave was obviously

a hugely important site in prehistory,

many scientists now believe

that the site was a northern base

that Denisovans and other hominins called home,

when the climate allowed.

It seems probable that Denisovan-like humans

ranged over a region

from which we already possess an adequate fossil record,

the question is finding out,

which of the known finds,

may actually represent Denisovans.

One interesting fact

is that there are large molar teeth

similar to those from Denisovans,

from a fossil from a site near the City Anina

in South-Western Romania,

This could mean that Denisovans or their genetic influence

may have extended westward as well as eastwards,

but but until more complete Denisovan material

is uncovered from the cave itself,

or more examples of Denisovan-like ancient DNA is extracted

from other fossils in Asia or Oceana,

we won't know for sure

who this enigmatic human group actually were.

(rhythmic music)

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator 2] It was always thought,

that humans were the only known life form that used tools,

it was unique to our hominid lineage,

and a remarkable talent that separated us from the animals,

so much for that idea.

In fact, we've known for some years

that our closest living relatives, chimps,

employ a variety of tools,

including some made of stone.

Recently, primatologists have discovered

that this also applies to two more distant cousins,

the capuchins and macaques,

living in the coastal regions of Thailand.

The new findings have attracted

some of the top archeologists,

who are interested in the so-called

Stone Age of non-human primates.

Delving through layers of dirt,

they have already begun to unearth the remains of tools

made thousands of years ago

by our ancestors and distant relatives.

The discoveries usher in a new age of perspective,

which gives us novel insight into our past.

It is now possible to make archeological comparisons

for the first time,

regarding our own evolution,

compared to that of our nearest ancestors,

and we can see what characteristics

all tool-wielders have in common.

This could also be the missing link

that further strengthens the argument

regarding human history

and where we came from.

The gentleman at the forefront of primate archeology

is Michael Haslam,

from the University of Oxford.

Dr. Haslam started out as a normal archeologist,

preoccupied with mainstream research.

His epiphany moment

came during a chance encounter with Dr. Bill McGrew,

an expert in chimpanzee tool use

from the University of Cambridge.

The conversation got Dr. Haslam wondering,

what chimp technology might have looked like in the past?

It just seemed like something

that needed to be investigated," he says.

"We had all of these techniques from archeology

that help you understand the past,

and they were only being applied to humans."

In 2012, he then set up

the Primate Archaeology Project, PRIMARCH.

In 2007, Julio Mercader and others reported

that they had discovered the remains

of a 4,300-year-old chimpanzee settlement,

there had been no further digs since then,

but with the Foundations of primate archeology

already laid in West Africa,

Dr. Haslam decided to look across the Atlantic to Brazil,

where evidence of tool use in wild capuchins,

was just starting to emerge,

specifically, they were interested

in tools used for nut-cracking.

A cashew is a tough nut to crack,

you must carefully balance it on an anvil

and bash it with a hammer,

while avoiding contact with the caustic resin in its shell.

This takes great skill,

yet bearded capuchin monkeys living in Northeast Brazil,

make it look like child's play.

When the team reached Brazil,

they decided to start digging at the base of a tree,

where the monkeys kept a stalk of stone tools,

and less than a meter down,

they found what they were after.

Some of the stones resembled modern-day capuchin hammers,

which are much larger than the average rocks in the area.

Others, looked like anvils,

which are four times the size of the hammers.

Carbon dating put the tools at 700 to 1,000 years old,

meaning they were in use

well before the first Europeans

arrived in the New World,

thus making them the oldest non-human stone tools

found outside Africa.

Like the Thailand forest chimps,

the monkeys have clearly been cracking nuts in the same way

for a long time.

The tools unearthed in both cases,

are remarkably similar to those used today,

but that doesn't necessarily mean

their technologies have stagnated since then.

To put things in perspective,

the sharp-edged stone flakes

used by early hominids 2.6 million years ago,

are identical to those manufactured 1 million years later

by their distant ancestors.

Another behavior witnessed,

was the capuchin monkeys

often stopping to lick mineral dust off the rocks,

ingesting the sharp particles

to cut up intestinal parasites.

We are still trying to figure out

why exactly they're doing this,

and how they know why to do this?

Further insights into the history of hominin tool use,

could come from studying the archeological record

of Burmese long-tailed macaques.

Troops of these monkeys living on a series of islands

off the west coast of Thailand,

used rocks predominantly to break open oysters, crabs,

and sea snails, rather than nuts.

This behavior was only discovered a decade ago,

but when Dr. Haslam heard about it,

he was eager to research it.

This would prove trickier than the others, however,

the big challenge with macaques is the sea,

it washes away all the remains of their tool use.

Waiting patiently for the tide to recede

and macaques to emerge

from their forest dwellings to forage

along the rocky shoreline,

they observed the monkeys

placing their catches on big boulders,

and whacking them with rocks,

until the shells loosened,

and released the juicy meat inside.

After their meal,

the monkeys would retreat to the forest.

At that point, the teams swung into action,

descending on the beach

and digging as fast as they could.

They could only excavate for a maximum of about four hours

before the tide came back in,

so that limited how deep they could go.

Carbon dating of oyster shells in the deepest deposits,

revealed that they were less than 100 years old,

but the trenches they dug,

contain telltale signs of much older use.

Back in West Africa,

PRIMARCH researchers found that their archeological approach

can help reveal how cultural traditions are maintained.

For example, the Tai chimps live in communities

favoring one of two nut-cracking tools,

Some, primarily use hammers made of stone,

others, prefer wooden clubs.

These differences are maintained,

despite females frequently moving between groups.

By studying the tools made in the past by females,

but left behind when they migrate,

it has been discovered that they tend to adopt

the tool of choice of their new group,

even if that means abandoning one

they have spent years working with.

This tendency to conform to local traditions

is also an essential feature of human culture,

and one that allows communities

to retain their distinct customs,

despite an influx of migrants.

In another fascinating study,

the chimps are helping researchers work out

what hominin use their tools for.

The archeological record is full of rocks

that look like anvils,

but no one knows whether a given slab

was for cracking nuts, bones, or both.

To address this question,

archeologists from the University College of London

are collecting stones from Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania,

where early hominin tools have been found.

They give these rocks to chimps living in a sanctuary,

and the chimps use them as anvils,

until they accumulate unique damage patterns.

A side-by-side comparison with anvils

found at the hominin sites

can then reveal if these were used for nut-cracking or not.

A similar approach

could help with the problem of distinguishing ancient tools

from stones damaged by natural forces.

With three new tool users on the block,

the primate archeologists

can also start to do comparative studies.

Although, there is no doubt

that primate archeology offers exciting new ways

to peer into our own past,

archeologists caution against drawing too many conclusions.

What we observe in a chimp,

did not necessarily happen in early hominins,

they are not the same species,

there are millions of years of evolution dividing them.

That applies even more so to capuchins and macaques,

with which we share ancestors far further back.

Nevertheless, primate archeology has come a long way

in the last few years.

(dramatic music)

(page swishing)

(gentle music)

- [Narrator 1] Over the last few years,

archeologists have discovered

various skeletons in caves in Mexico,

which they believe are strong evidence

that humans lived on the continent,

as far back as 13 to 15,000 years ago,

thousands of years earlier than previously thought,

but last year, a much more controversial find

of manmade artifacts

was announced from Mexico,

which suggested that humans,

may have in fact, lived in the Americas,

at least 30,000 years ago,

far, far earlier than conventional timelines would have it,

but is this new evidence to be trusted?

In August, 2017, it was announced to the world

that a few years previously, in February, 2012,

cave divers had discovered

one of America's oldest human skeletons

in a submerged cave called Chan Hol near Tulum,

on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

The divers posted photos of their amazing discovery

of a nearly complete skull,

another, whose bones online on social media.

The photos were seen

by archeologists Arturo Gonzalez Gonzales

at the Desert Museum in Saltillo, Mexico,

and Jeronimo Aviles Olguin,

of the Institute of American Prehistory in Cancun.

However, the researchers were not able to visit the cave

until late March,

and by then, it was too late,

the skeleton had been stolen,

all that remained were around 150 bone fragments

and a pelvic bone

that had been incorporated into a stalagmite

growing up from the cave floor.

By analyzing the rate at which calcite had formed

around the bone,

the team determined that the skeleton

was older than 13,000 years,

and therefore, one of America's oldest skeletons.

Not everyone was convinced by such an early date, however.

Alistair Pike, an archeological scientist

at the University of Southampton in the UK,

believed that the stalagmite set over the bone

during a time of extreme climate change,

which may have altered the stalagmites rate of growth.

He therefore, thought bones to be somewhat younger,

probably, a minimum of 11,300 years old.

On the basis of these bones,

the researchers believed that the skeleton,

dubbed the Young Man of Chan Hol,

belonged to a young man

who died when sea levels were much lower

and the cave was above ground.

A baffling mystery is how this man

had arrived at the location 13,000 years ago,

bearing in mind the fact that Mexico

is well over 4,000 miles away

from the Bering Land Crossing.

Wolfgang Stinnesbeck of the Institute of Geoscientists

at Heidelberg University,

was lead author of the initial study of the skeleton,

published in the Journal August in "PLOS One."

He had a few theories in mind

as to what may have happened,

he says, "Scenarios of travel by boat

along the Pacific shoreline, the Kelp Highway,

must be taken seriously,

but alternative migration routes by boat from Europe

along the Greenland Ice Margin,

or via Antarctica are also possible,

though, highly speculative.

If travel by boat is correct,

then likely campsites are now set underwater,

due to early Holocene rise of sea levels."

There are very few human remains from the Americas

older than 13,000 years,

the skeleton of a teenage girl, named Eve of Naharon,

recovered from another cave in Yucatan,

was carbon dated to more than 12,000 years old,

and a skeleton found in another submerged cave near Tulum,

was dated deemed to around 13 1/3 thousand years old.

In these early dates caused some controversy

within the archeological community,

it was nothing to the reactions

which followed the announcement made in July, 2020,

of discoveries from a cave high in the desert mountains

of North Central Mexico.

This remarkable find,

suggested that humans had reached the Americas,

a staggering 15,000 years earlier

than previously thought.

The controversial discoveries

were published in the Journal "Nature,"

and with a result of eight years of work

at Chiquihuite Cave,

located almost 9,000 feet above sea level,

in Mexico's Astillero Mountains.

The excavation team led by Ciprian Ardelean,

of the Autonomous University of Zacatecas in Mexico,

discovered almost 2,000 stone tools,

239 of which,

had become fixed in layers of gravel

that were carbon dated

to between 25,000 and 32,000 years old.

Ardelean said of his team's amazing finds,

"Other results provide new evidence

for the antiquity of humans in the Americas,

there are only a few artifacts

and a couple of dates

from the range of 33,000 to 31,000 years ago,

however, the presence is there.

It's likely that humans used this site

on a relatively constant basis,

perhaps in recurrent seasonal episodes,

part of larger migratory cycles."

But the Ardelean's claims for the site,

have been met with many objections

from the archeological community.

The extreme age claimed by Ardelean

for the Chiquihuite Cave,

does not fit with the generally accepted opinion

that people from Asia walked over land bridge

via the Bering Strait and into the Americas,

as the ice sheets that covered Canada

during the last Glacial Maximum,

from 26 1/2 to 19,000 years ago began retreating.

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Professor David Meltzer

from the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas

is far from convinced by the findings

of the Ardelean and his team.

He believes that what they have claimed

are manmade artifacts from the cave,

may well be nothing of the sort,

and that far more evidence is needed

before claims of human presence in Mexico,

around 30,000 years ago.

"It's not enough to argue that the stone specimens

could be cultural artifacts,

one has to show that they're not natural," he said.

"With a stone tool tradition that long-lasting one expects,

would've been far more widespread in the region,

raising the question

of why that hasn't been spotted elsewhere?

Perhaps more important, with modern humans,

one expects to see evidence of technological

and cultural change,

over such a long span of time."

Meltzer questioned why people would have a cave

located so high up,

that it would've been easier and more convenient

to camp closer to the valley floor.

He also questioned why this particular site,

was supposed to have had long-term repeated occupation

when there appeared to be nothing,

which would've been used to,

the ancient humans had the spot?

Another doubter

is Loren Davis, the Oregon State Archeologist.

He's pointed out that the cave environments

can create numerous,

naturally fractured stones

that can be misinterpreted

as man-made artifacts.

He's also concerned about the lack of any other evidence

for human presence in the cave, he says,

"The thing to remember

is that humans don't have a monopoly

on the physics required to break rocks.

You can have a big list

of all the things you might expect to see in a site,

and the researchers don't have anything

except for some broken rock,

and if you take the rocks away, there's really nothing."

University of Oregon Professor Dennis Jenkins,

who directs excavations

at the early site of Paisley Caves

in South-Central Oregon,

has voiced concerns

that many of the alleged stone blades from the site,

don't appear to have been sharp enough

to have been used effectively.

But despite the criticisms,

the team who excavated Chiquihuite Cave are positive

about the significant of the finds they discovered there.

Team member Devlin Gandy,

an archeologist at the University of Cambridge said,

"I think this study shows that we need to reexamine

what we now think about the people of the Americas,

and we need to be open

to a much longer time span."

Professor Tom Higham,

the Director of Oxford's Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit,

and a member of the team who worked on the site,

is convinced their conclusions are valid

and extremely important.

He says, "This is a unique site,

we've never seen anything like it.

The stone tool evidence is very, very compelling.

Anyone can see

that these are deliberately manufactured stone tools,

and there are lots of them.

The dating, which is my job, is robust,

and so, it's a very exciting site to have been involved in.

In Brazil, there are several sites

where you have stone tools that look robust to me,

and a dated 26 to 30,000,

similar dates to the Chiquihuite site,

this could be an important discovery

that could stimulate new work

to find other sites in the Americas,

that date to this period."

The initial colonization of the Americas,

the last major landmass to be populated by humans,

remains a highly debated topic,

and the exact timing of the first arrivals

is currently unknown.

The earliest archeological record of Mexico itself,

is far from clear

and has not been studied extensively.

These new findings will remain hotly contested,

probably until the next,

even more controversial discoveries are made.

As Loren Davis,

an archeologist at Oregon State University said,

"Everybody knows that when you step in the ring

at this level,

you're looking for an international debate.

You're going to get it,

and you should have your defense prepared.

To me, it's inevitable,

we're going to continue to push this back,

until there's no further back to go."

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