700,000-year-old tools discovered

LONDON -- Ancient tools found in Britain show that humans lived in northern Europe 200,000 years earlier than was previously known, at a time when England's climate was warm enough to be the home of lions, elephants and saber-tooth tigers, scientists announced Wednesday.

The 32 black flint artifacts, found in river sediments in Pakefield in eastern England, date back 700,000 years and represent the earliest unequivocal evidence for human presence north of the Alps, the scientists said.

The finding dashes the long-held theory that humans did not migrate north from the relatively warm climates of the Mediterranean region until half a million years ago, the scientists said.

"The discovery that early humans could have existed this far north this long ago was startling," said Chris Stringer, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum, one of four British scientists who took part in the study and announced the finding at a news conference in London. Their discovery is detailed in the scientific journal Nature.

"Now that we know this, we can search for the remains of these people, knowing that we may find them," he said. "Their arrival in northern Europe could have happened even earlier. We have a whole new area of research opening up to us."

Jim Rose, a professor at the University of London who also was involved in the study, said that 700,000 years ago England was still connected to the European mainland and enjoyed periods of balmy weather between the time that massive glaciers swept through the area, freezing and reforming the landscapes.

During such thaws, he said, early humans would have been able to migrate from the Mediterranean to England, where there were mild winters, flat landscapes and major rivers.

Rhinoceroses, elephants, saber-tooth tigers, lions, hippopotamuses and bears lived in the area at the time.

The scientists said they don't know whether the humans used the newly discovered tools to kill animals for food, or merely to scavenge from carcasses that predators left behind.

The artifacts suggest the early humans didn't colonize northern areas of Europe, but merely expanded their migratory patterns there when the weather permitted, the scientists said.

Pakefield, a coastal village 120 miles northeast of London, is one of the few areas where glaciers preserved rather than destroyed the sediment that contained ancient artifacts, Rose said. Coastal erosion is now opening up cliffs around Pakefield, exposing fossils and artifacts.

The earliest traces of human presence in southern Europe are at least 800,000 years old and include materials that were discovered in Atapuerca, Spain.

Alison Brooks, an anthropologist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the finding, urged caution.

"One always has to be skeptical, given that previous claims of early human presence in northern Europe have had problems with the date or authenticity of the artifacts found. If subsequent findings support this discovery, it would be very exciting and would change our ideas about the adaptability of early humans," she said.