新的證據(jù)表明，這些人類祖先在11.7萬年前神秘死亡

新的證據(jù)表明，這些人類祖先在11.7萬年前神秘死亡

In the early 1930s, Dutch anthropologists found a giant bed of bones hidden above the banks of the Solo river on the Indonesian island of Java.

20世紀30年代初，荷蘭人類學家在印度尼西亞爪哇島的梭羅河岸上發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個巨大的骨床。

More than 25,000 fossil specimens were buried in the river mud in an area called Ngandong, including 12 skull caps and two leg bones from a particularly intriguing human ancestor: Homo erectus.

在一個叫nganton的地方，超過25000個化石標本被埋在河泥中，其中包括12個頭蓋骨和兩塊來自一個特別有趣的人類祖先——直立人的腿骨。

This species of early human persisted for nearly 2 million years and spread far across parts of Africa and Asia. But scientists had been unable to identify when the last of them died out.

這種早期人類持續(xù)了近200萬年，并在非洲和亞洲的部分地區(qū)傳播開來。但科學家們一直無法確定它們最后滅絕的時間。

Efforts to determine the exact age of the Java fossils didn't help much, since that gave a broad range of options: Their time of death was estimated to be somewhere between 550,000 and 27,000 years ago.

確定爪哇化石的確切年齡的努力沒有多大幫助，因為這提供了廣泛的選擇:他們的死亡時間估計在55萬至2.7萬年前。

But a study published today in the journal Nature has put questions about the fate of the last H. erectus to rest.

但是今天發(fā)表在《自然》雜志上的一項研究對最后一批直立人的命運提出了疑問。

By dating the surrounding river sediment, rather than the fossils themselves, anthropologists were able to identify a much tighter age range for these skulls. The results showed that the H. erectus individuals perished in a mass death between 117,000 and 108,000 years ago.

通過測定周圍河流沉積物的年代，而不是化石本身，人類學家能夠確定這些頭骨更小的年齡范圍。結果表明，直立人在11.7萬至10.8萬年前的一次大規(guī)模死亡中死亡。

That means the bones represent the last known appearance of H. erectus in the archaeological record.

這意味著這些骨頭代表了考古學記錄中已知的最后一次直立人的出現(xiàn)。

The new timeline helps solve other puzzles as well, since it enables anthropologists to identify other ancient human species that H. erectus overlapped with – and those it didn't.

新的時間軸也有助于解決其他難題，因為它使人類學家能夠確定其他與直立人有重疊的遠古人類物種，以及那些沒有重疊的。