Wednesday, July 7 07:28 pmA mysterious race of ancient Britons who had much in common with people today but belonged to another human species lived in Norfolk almost a million years ago, scientists believe.
Examples of their stone tools were found close to the seashore at Happisburgh, near the Norfolk Broads, where coastal erosion has exposed a treasure trove of fossils.
Evidence suggests they were hunting mammoth and deer and hiding from sabre-toothed cats in the area more than 800,000 years ago, making them the oldest known human settlers in northern Europe.
The find pushes back the date when humans were first known to have occupied Britain by at least 100,000 years.
No bones of the tool-makers have yet been discovered, but scientists believe they may have been related to a species called Homo antecessor (Pioneer Man) that lived in southern Europe at the same time.
They were not ancestors of people living today, but represented a "dead end" branch of the human evolutionary tree.
Yet scientists believe they looked similar to modern humans, and probably wore animal-skin clothes and built shelters. They might even have known how to master fire.
During this pre-glacial period Britain had a climate similar to southern Scandinavia today, with mild summers but bitterly cold winters that would have been hard to survive.
Professor Chris Stringer, one of the scientists who reported the discovery on Wednesday in the journal Nature, said: "This was a species that was fairly human in terms of walking upright; these were not ape-men.
"They had quite big brains and were relatively advanced humans compared with their ancient forebears in Africa, but still lacking a lot of modern human features."
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100707/tsc-800-000-year-old-britons-revealed-4b158bc.html
(Submitted by Pavlos Anagnostopoulos)
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