{"id":247364,"date":"2025-02-26T17:24:10","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T17:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/26\/humans-moved-into-african-rainforests-at-least-150000-years-ago\/"},"modified":"2025-02-26T17:24:10","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T17:24:10","slug":"humans-moved-into-african-rainforests-at-least-150000-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/26\/humans-moved-into-african-rainforests-at-least-150000-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"Humans moved into African rainforests at least 150,000 years ago"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/022625_bb_rainforest-humans_inline.jpg?fit=680%2C486&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Humans moved into African rainforests at least 150,000 years ago\" title=\"Humans moved into African rainforests at least 150,000 years ago\" \/><\/div> \r\n<br><div data-component=\"video-embed\">\n\t\t\t\t\n\n\n\n\n<p>Humans lived under the leafy canopy of a West African rainforest by at least 150,000 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Previously, the oldest secure evidence for humans living in African rainforests dated to about 18,000 years ago. The earliest human rainforest presence in the world had been placed at about 70,000 years ago in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, new sediment analyses at B\u00e9t\u00e9 I, a site in the West African nation of Ivory Coast, indicate that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-025-08613-y\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">people occupied wet tropical forests tens of thousands of years earlier<\/a>, researchers report February 26 in <em>Nature<\/em>. The date and site location may help to explain how <em>Homo sapiens<\/em> evolved.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image  has-alignleft\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-full\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><span class=\"caption wp-caption-3150939\">A researcher holds one of the stone tools found at a site in the African nation of Ivory Coast that helped to uncover the oldest known human rainforest occupation.<\/span><span class=\"credit wp-credit-3150939\">Jimbob Blinkhorn, MPG<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>B\u00e9t\u00e9 I was discovered in the early 1980s. Stone artifacts unearthed there from 1982 to 1993 include large implements suited for cutting fibrous plants and other tropical forest resources. In 2020, archaeologist and geochronologist Ben Arous and colleagues, including one of the site\u2019s original excavators, Francois Yod\u00e9 Gu\u00e9d\u00e9, relocated the site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Their new investigation \u2014 completed shortly before quarrying destroyed B\u00e9t\u00e9 I \u2014 used two sediment dating methods to obtain an age estimate for the site\u2019s stone tools. Sediment samples contained pollen, plant remains and chemical remnants of plants\u2019 waxy coating typical of humid, West African rainforests today. Dense woods resulted in low levels of grass pollen at the ancient site, the researchers report.<\/p>\n\n\n<aside class=\"sn-conversion rich-text rich-text--with-sidebar\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n.email-conversion {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  color: white;\n  margin-top: 50px;\n  background-image: url(\"\/wp-content\/themes\/sciencenews\/client\/src\/images\/cta-module@2x.jpg\");\n  padding: 20px;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"rich-text embedded-conversion-content is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article-type\/deep-end-podcast?cta=top\">\n  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/MAR_014_25_A_598X336_option2_V02.png\" id=\"dynamic-conversion\"\/><\/a><\/div><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article-type\/deep-end-podcast?cta=top\">\n<\/a>\n\n<style><![CDATA[\n#dynamic-conversion {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  max-width: 100%;\n  height: auto;\n  clear: both;\n}\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n\n<\/aside>\n\n\n<p>Ancient rainforest pioneers served as ancestors of later Stone Age populations in Ivory Coast\u2019s rainforests and in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41559-023-02046-4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">coastal mangrove forests farther north in what\u2019s now Senegal<\/a>, suspects Eleanor Scerri, Arous\u2019 colleague at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The new findings also strengthen an argument that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/oldest-known-homo-sapiens-fossils-come-northern-africa-studies-claim\"><em>H. sapiens<\/em> evolved roughly 300,000 years ago via mating among populations based in different African regions and habitats<\/a>, including West Africa\u2019s rainforests. Even around 150,000 years ago, \u201cwhen these groups coalesced, their exchanges shaped the course of our evolution and likely contributed to the success of our species,\u201d Scerri says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n<br>\r\n<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/humans-african-rainforests-evolution\">Source link <\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Humans lived under the leafy canopy of a West African rainforest by at least 150,000 years ago. Previously, the oldest secure evidence for humans living in African rainforests dated to about 18,000 years ago. The earliest human rainforest presence in the world had been placed at about 70,000 years ago in Southeast Asia. Now, new [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/022625_bb_rainforest-humans_inline.jpg?fit=680%2C486&ssl=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[1863,9166,17400,191782,111],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247364"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247366,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247364\/revisions\/247366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}