400,000-year-old human teeth ‘earlier proof of modern man’

TEL AVIV - Human teeth dating back 400,000 years, found in a cave near the Israeli town of Rosh HaAyin, are the earliest evidence of modern man, and show he lived twice as long ago as was previously thought, Tel Aviv University said on its website Tuesday.

Until now, human remains from only 200,000 years ago had been discovered in Africa, leading researchers to speculate that this was the continent on which Homo sapiens originated.

The cave was uncovered in 2000 near Rosh HaAyin, east of Tel Aviv, and a morphological analysis was performed on the teeth found there.

The teeth are very similar to those of modern man, CT scans and X-Rays showed. They are also “very similar” to evidence of modern man from those discovered at two separate locations in northern Israel and which date from 100,000 years ago, the university said.

According to the researchers working at the cave, their discoveries are likely to change the perception, common until now, that modern man originated in Africa.

While in recent years archaeological remains and human skeletons found in China and Spain have undermined that thesis, the latest findings are significant and invaluable, say Avi Gopher and Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University, who uncovered the cave.