I post this for the amusement of those who scoffed at the initial dating results...

Apparently the disbelieved million years old skull fragment was actual 1.77 million years old.

“Million-year-old” fossil skulls from China are far older—and not Denisovans 

Quote:Two skulls from Yunxian, in northern China, aren’t ancestors of Denisovans after all; they’re actually the oldest known Homo erectus fossils in eastern Asia.

A recent study has re-dated the skulls to about 1.77 million years old, which makes them the oldest hominin remains found so far in East Asia. Their age means that Homo erectus (an extinct common ancestor of our species, Neanderthals, and Denisovans) must have spread across the continent much earlier and much faster than we’d previously given them credit for. It also sheds new light on who was making stone tools at some even older archaeological sites in China.
Homo erectus spread like wildfire

Yunxian is an important—and occasionally contentious—archaeological site on the banks of central China’s Han River. Along with hundreds of stone tools and animal bones, the layers of river sediment have yielded three nearly complete hominin skulls (only two of which have been described in a publication so far). Shantou University paleoanthropologist Hua Tu and his colleagues measured the ratio of two isotopes, aluminum-26 and beryllium-10, in grains of quartz from the sediment layer that once held the skulls. The results suggest that Homo erectus lived and died along the Han River 1.77 million years ago. That’s just 130,000 years after the species first appeared in Africa.

It's an excellent read... I suspect as people start looking at 'rejected' materials... they're going to start finding things they had missed before.

(02-21-2026, 10:50 PM)Maxmars Wrote: I post this for the amusement of those who scoffed at the initial dating results...

Apparently the disbelieved million years old skull fragment was actual 1.77 million years old.

“Million-year-old” fossil skulls from China are far older—and not Denisovans 


It's an excellent read... I suspect as people start looking at 'rejected' materials... they're going to start finding things they had missed before.

We know so little of our past.

(02-21-2026, 11:15 PM)DBCowboy Wrote: We know so little of our past.

We know so little of our present...

We have a sitting Congressperson saying we are interacting with interdimensional beings...

(02-21-2026, 10:50 PM)Maxmars Wrote: I post this for the amusement of those who scoffed at the initial dating results...

Apparently the disbelieved million years old skull fragment was actual 1.77 million years old.

“Million-year-old” fossil skulls from China are far older—and not Denisovans 


It's an excellent read... I suspect as people start looking at 'rejected' materials... they're going to start finding things they had missed before.

It's crazy to think that Homo erectus made it from Africa to China in 130,000 years??

(02-22-2026, 07:56 AM)Kurokage Wrote: It's crazy to think that Homo erectus made it from Africa to China in 130,000 years??

I wonder if our understanding about the when and where of hominids is not robust enough to account for their movement (yet?).

For us, hominids other than human, appear as a mixed bag of suppositions about 'migration' behavior from tiny clues scattered far and wide.

130,000 years ....  That's a lot of generations... a lot of unknowns.

(02-22-2026, 12:28 PM)Maxmars Wrote: I wonder if our understanding about the when and where of hominids is not robust enough to account for their movement (yet?).

For us, hominids other than human, appear as a mixed bag of suppositions about 'migration' behavior from tiny clues scattered far and wide.

130,000 years ....  That's a lot of generations... a lot of unknowns.

I'm sure the Chinese will try to jump on this to benefit the party some how.

You do make a good point though.
I suppose we can only trace a 'migration' based on the age of fossils found and base theories around that.

(02-22-2026, 12:39 PM)Kurokage Wrote: I'm sure the Chinese will try to jump on this to benefit the party some how.

You do make a good point though.
I suppose we can only trace a 'migration' based on the age of fossils found and base theories around that.

Yeah... I'm a bit disappointed in "academia" in that regard.

We have seen it in almost all 'cultures and political' people...

that which they discover is 'accepted' only within "their" narrative.

Time is the enemy they fight.... I think they'll eventually lose the choke-hold...much as certain factions within the Egyptian government seem to have... it was inevitable.

Still... thousands of generations of hominids blossoming over that long could have created a nation... and we would likely never know... we're still being told they didn't think.

(02-21-2026, 10:50 PM)Maxmars Wrote: I suspect as people start looking at 'rejected' materials... they're going to start finding things they had missed before.

The truth is that happens a lot.

Harte

(02-22-2026, 01:51 PM)Maxmars Wrote: Yeah... I'm a bit disappointed in "academia" in that regard.

We have seen it in almost all 'cultures and political' people...

that which they discover is 'accepted' only within "their" narrative.

Time is the enemy they fight.... I think they'll eventually lose the choke-hold...much as certain factions within the Egyptian government seem to have... it was inevitable.

It was evil Academia that told you about this discovery.

Harte