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New Delhi: A new study has shown that India’s Thar Desert may have been home to the youngest known Acheulian population – an ancient human species known to have developed distinctive stone tools – about 1,77,000 years ago, A new study has revealed.
This study published in the journal scientific report Tuesday, suggests that our ancestors may have interacted with some of the earliest humans in the monsoon region of the Thar Desert.
Acheulean has the longest lasting tool making tradition. The distinctive oval and pear-shaped “hand-axes” and cleavers are typical Acheulian instruments. Until now, the human ancestors who practiced this tool-making were believed to have lived in Africa 1.5 million years ago and India by 1.2 million years ago.
In the 1980s, some such stone tools were discovered at Singi Talav, which is located on the edge of the Thar Desert near a lake near the present city of Didwana.
However, the technology needed to accurately date these devices was not available at the time of their discovery. Since then, several sites have been investigated that help reconstruct the chronology of the Acheulian occupations in India.
Now a team from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History has re-examined the site. Their findings reveal the presence of Acheulian populations until about 177,000 years ago, shortly before the early expansion of Homo sapiens across Asia.
The timing and route of the initial expansion of our own species across Asia has been the subject of much debate. Identifying where these distinct populations were found is critical to revealing the human and cultural landscape faced by the earliest members of our species to expand beyond Africa.
Although fossils of ancient human populations in South Asia are extremely rare, according to the researchers, changes to the sets of stone tools they made, used and left behind may help resolve when and where these encounters occurred. Would have happened
Singi Talav was once considered to be one of the oldest Acheulean sites in India. However, the new study now makes it one of the youngest.
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Acheulian population flourished in Tharu
The study shows that Acheulian populations continued to live in the Thar Desert, even after they disappeared from East Africa about 214,000 years ago and Arabia by 190,000 years ago. This was shortly before the early expansion of Homosapiens across Asia.
Jimbob Blinkhorn, of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, said, “The lakeside setting has ideal conservation conditions for an archaeological site, which allows us to return 30 years after the first excavations and to revisit the main occupation horizon.” enables identification. The study’s lead author said in a statement.
Blinkhorn said, “We have applied a range of modern methods to re-examine this important site, including new approaches to directly date the occupation horizon and to reveal vegetation in the Acheulian populated landscape. for.”
The team, which included researchers from Anna University, Chennai, examined plant microfossils, known as phytoliths, as well as soil geochemistry features to understand the ecology of the time when the Acheulian Toolkit was produced.
“This is the first time that the ecology of an Acheulian site in India has been studied using these methods, revealing the broader character of the landscape in which these populations live,” Hema Achuthan of Anna University said in a statement. “
Achuthan, who also took part in the original excavations at the site, said, “The results of the two methods we applied complement each other, which is rich in grass types, which can increase during the summer monsoon. flourish during.”
With this data, the study sheds light on the environmental conditions that allowed Acheulian populations to thrive on the margins of the monsoon in the Thar Desert until at least 177,000 years ago.
“This is supported by evidence from across the region indicating that India hosted the youngest population using the Acheulian Toolkit in the world,” Blinkhorn said.
“The late persistence of Acheulian at the Singi Lake and elsewhere in India directly evidences the appearance of our own species, Homo sapiens, as they spread across Asia,” he said.
The study suggested that this site may be one in which homosapiens encountered another, closely related, human population.
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