Cut marks on bone fossils found on an Indian foothill could well change the narrative on human evolution.
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Masol, an inconspicuous village tucked away in the lower reaches of the Shivaliks in Punjab with a smattering of vegetation, has raised a question fundamental to our existence: where and when did the first member of our species walk on this earth? Is it possible that ‘modern humans’emerged first in Asia, or more precisely, what is presentday India, and not Africa, as is widely believed across the world? And that, too, halfamillion years before the point where the evolutionary timeline is said to have ticked off going by the fossilised evidence in Africa?
Yes, palaeoanthropology might have just run into a watershed moment at Masol. In a discipline rife with claims and counterclaims, where it isn’t always easy to separate scientific findings from their interpretations coloured by concerns nonscientific, the discoveries at this village near Chandigarh are bound to lead to furious debate. They may well hold the key to some startling possibilities, shake up conventional wisdom on the timeline of our evolution, rewrite the human story and, maybe, even rattle the very foundations of anthropology.
This story is from the March 28, 2016 edition of Outlook.
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This story is from the March 28, 2016 edition of Outlook.
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