Photos: Wikimedia Commons
Humans lived in Africa’s wet tropical forests 150,000 years ago, before they left the continent, a new study suggested.
Until recently, it was widely believed that early humans were restricted to grasslands and savannahs, whereas rainforests were inhabited much later in human history.
Researchers analyzed stone tools discovered at a site in Côte d’Ivoire that was likely to have been heavily wooded 150,000 years ago.
The findings, published in the journal Nature, have prompted scientists to rethink the conditions in which humans lived before spreading to other parts of the world.
“Until now, though, the oldest firm evidence for people living in African rainforests dated to around 18,000 years ago,” wrote two of the researchers in The Conversation.
