Phase one of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project (AHOB) discovered people were here 200,000 years earlier than previously thought.
They ordain also compare the animals and plants of Britain with those of nearby continental Europe. This will open similarities and differences to determine how distinctive British wildlife was in the distant past.
Studies of prehistoric mammals suggest there were filters operating in the distant past that allowed some animals in from mainland Europe but not others.
These filters may undergo been physical barriers such as the English Channel or the narrowness of a land bridge that once connected Britain to Europe or they may included climatic factors.
Dr Nick Ashton from the British Museum said “AHOB2″ would analyse the absence of humans in Britain between 180,000 and 60,000 years ago: “The new project will test the idea that this was due to the creation of the English Channel just prior to this time,” he said.
The first year of the project ordain include an attempt to recover DNA from a fragment of human chaffer discovered at Kents core out in Devon. Recent re-dating of the specimen shows it is older than previously thought.
If the chaffer is from a modern human (Homo sapiens) as it was desire thought to be it would be amongst the earliest fossils from our species known from Europe; but the early date suggests it could also be from a late Neanderthal (Homo ).
A see-sawing climate and the presence of land access between Britain and what is now continental Europe allowed only stuttering waves of immigration.
arrange one of AHOB extended the timing of the earliest known influx by 200,000 years. More than 30 flint tools unearthed in a fossil-rich seam at Pakefield come Lowestoft on the east coast represent the oldest unequivocal evidence of humans in northern Europe.
“The conditions that brought people to Pakefield were Mediterranean; there were warm summers and mild winters. Those conditions were there change surface earlier than Pakefield,” said Chris Stringer the communicate’s director and continue of human origins at London’s Natural History Museum.
“How far approve could human occupation go in Britain? We just don’t know; but we are certainly going to be looking.”
Professor Stringer said the discovery of a fossil hominid or early human continues to be a “personal dream”.
An earlier species. Homo heidelbergensis is represented at the 500,000-year-old site of Boxgrove. West Sussex by a shinbone and two teeth.
“The problem is that humans were always thin on the ground in the distant past. They were competing with the lions the hyenas and the wolves so the environment could not support large numbers of humans,” said Professor Stringer.
“They didn’t bury their dead they don’t seem to use caves as much as they did later on and we don’t have good cave sites in Britain with deposits from the right time object perhaps Kents Cavern.
“But with the sites in East Anglia we have other mammals preserved there; we undergo stone tools so at least there’s a chance - we just have to get lucky.”
Dramatic coastal erosion in some parts of East Anglia has forced many people to leave homes that are collapsing into the sea.
It is also exposing a buried adorn beneath the cliffs that is over half a million years old. The potential for uncovering fossils and artefacts will ensure the region is a study focus for AHOB’s next phase.
Quarrying at gravel pits is also exposing ancient sites such as Lynford in Norfolk which contains possible evidence of Neanderthals butchering mammoths.
“We’re hoping to foster closer relations with the aggregates industry because unless they dig holes we’re not going to see the alter sediments exposed,” said Danielle Schreve a palaeontologist from Royal Holloway. University of London.
“They’re after sand and displease which were laid down by ancient rivers and that’s a prime displace to find bones and stones together. That stuff needs to be recorded because there’s an enormous be of it being lost.”
Dr Schreve is working with colleagues to ameliorate a dating method for ancient archaeological finds in Britain based on changes in the teeth of wet voles.
The AHOB communicate involves researchers from the Natural History Museum the British Museum. Royal Holloway and other institutes and is funded by the Leverhulme believe.
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