https://www.newsweek.com/human-evolution-rainforests-archaeology-west-africa-ivory-coast-2036488
Humans were living in rainforests roughly
150,000 years ago, some 80,000 years earlier
than was previously thought—and may have been
an important center for early human evolution.
This is the conclusion of an international
team of researchers who re-examined an
archaeological site in West Africa from which
stone tools of previously uncertain
age—including picks and smaller retouched
tools—had been uncovered.
...
"Before our study, the oldest secure evidence
for habitation in African rainforests was
around 18 thousand years ago, and the oldest
evidence of rainforest habitation anywhere
came from southeast Asia at about 70 thousand
years ago," said lead author and archaeologist
Eslem Ben Arous, of Spain's National Centre
for Human Evolution Research, in a statement.
...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08613-y
Humans in Africa’s wet tropical forests
150 thousand years ago
Abstract
Humans emerged across Africa shortly before
300 thousand years ago (ka). Although this
pan-African evolutionary process implicates
diverse environments in the human story, the
role of tropical forests remains poorly
understood. Here we report a clear
association between late Middle Pleistocene
material culture and a wet tropical forest
in southern Côte d’Ivoire, a region of
present-day rainforest. Twinned optically
stimulated luminescence and electron spin
resonance dating methods constrain the onset
of human occupations at Bété I to around
150 ka, linking them with Homo sapiens. Plant
wax biomarker, stable isotope, phytolith and
pollen analyses of associated sediments all
point to a wet forest environment. The
results represent the oldest yet known clear
association between humans and this habitat
type. The secure attribution of stone tool
assemblages with the wet forest environment
demonstrates that Africa’s forests were not
a major ecological barrier for H. sapiens as
early as around 150 ka.
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