ANYAMA, CÔTE D’IVOIRE—Early humans adapted to rainforest environments much earlier than previously thought, according to a statement released by the Max Plank Institute of Geoanthropology. Homo sapiens originally started to spread out across Africa about 300,000 years ago, but it was long believed that they primarily stuck to the savannas. Wet rainforest environments, with their harsh climatic and ecological conditions, were thought to act as a barrier to human settlement as hominins continued to migrate across the continent. New analysis of material found at a site known as Béte 1 in Côte d’Ivoire is debunking that theory. Sediment analysis and dating of layers containing stone tools indicate that humans surprisingly occupied the area 150,000 years ago, when it was blanketed in thick rainforests. “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 Eslem Ben Arous, researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology. “This pushes back the oldest known evidence of humans in rainforests by more than double the previously known estimate.” Read the original scholarly article about this research in Nature. To read about prehistoric hunter-gatherers in South Africa, go to "Our Coastal Origins."
