Earliest Occupation of Britain Earlier than Previously Thought
The Pakefield Blades. Photo by Harry Taylor/Natural History Museum
Nature tomorrow will feature a paper describing the oldest artefacts found in the British Isles. The thirty-two blades would be pretty dull by themselves, but they’ve been dated with what sounds like a reasonable degree of success to around 680,000 years ago. I have to admit I found ITV’s news coverage a bit poor. The thrust of the argument was that 680,000 was a Very Big Number, which made the otherwise dull looking blades Very Old Things. Fortunately there are more interesting things to say than that.
The finds at Pakefield aren’t simply old, they also are a lot further north than other known occupations of the same time. We know of populations of Homo Antecessor living in Spain. The date of these finds would suggest that Homo Antecessor had a much wide range than previously thought. This means we may have to rethink our ideas of how intelligent earlier hominins were and what it takes to be able to colonise new territories.
It’s in the news at:
Update: and also now the BBC with some nice maps. No doubt many more will appear shortly.
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