What it does is push back, by quite a lot, the timeframe in which we think anatomically modern humans — so, you and me — migrated out of Africa.
- Simon Armitage, geologist, Royal Holloway, University of London
Archaeologists led by Hans-Peter Uerpmann from Eberhard Karls University in Tubingen, Germany, found the 100,000- to 125,000-year-old tools in a rocky, sheltered indentation in a bare, arid mountain in the United Arab Emirates. The tools seem to have been made with a technology similar to that used during that time period in East Africa, suggesting that early humans may have left that continent by crossing what is now the bottom of the Red Sea.
Unusual climate conditions back then would have mostly dried up the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which separates the Horn of Africa from Arabia, researchers report in the journal Science. And once early humans made the easy crossing, perhaps using rafts or boats, they would have arrived at a welcoming world of rivers, lakes and grassland, instead of the deserts seen today.
