Ancient Hominins May Have Lived Alongside Modern Humans in Arabia.

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Some of the ancient hand axes that archaeologists uncovered in Saffaqah, Saudi Arabia.
Credit: Palaeodeserts (Ian R. Cartwright)
▼ Ancient human relatives lived on the Arabian Peninsula for an astonishingly long time — from about 240,000 to 190,000 years ago — and spread into the heart of the region by following its blue rivers and lakes, a new study found.
These early human relatives persisted for so long that they could have run into some modern humans, orHomosapiens,along the way, the researchers said in the study, published online yesterday (Nov. 29) in the journal Scientific Reports.
But the research team didn't make this discovery by studying piles of prehistoric bones. Rather, they traveled to Saudi Arabia to examine and date the stone hand axes that these ancient human relatives created.
Ancient tool-wielders
In particular, the scientists looked at hand axes made by hominins, a group that includes humans, our ancestors and our close evolutionary cousins. "In other words, as a group, [hominins] postdate the split between the line that gave rise to our ancestors and the line that gave rise to the ancestors of chimps," said study lead researcher Eleanor Scerri, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany.
"Early hominins had small brains and made crude tools," Scerri told Live Science. "However, later hominins had bigger brains and were more sophisticated. Instead of crudely banging rocks togetherto produce sharp-edged stone flakes, they created beautiful, symmetrical artifacts called hand axes."
Large, expertly shaped cutting tools (such as hand axes) made by hominins are known as Acheulean tools. These instruments — called the "the Swiss army knife of prehistory" — date to 1.5 million years ago; they come from the longest-lasting tool-making tradition in prehistory, Scerri said. Because it's rare to find hominin bones, Acheulean tools are a great stand-in for hominins when trying to figure out when and where they lived, the researchers said.
It's unclear which hominins made the hand axes in Saudi Arabia. "However, hominins that have been found with Acheulean tools include Homo erectus, who was probably a direct ancestor of humans," Scerri said. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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