A discovery was made this week that has the potential to change everything we think we know about early humans and our ancestors. Many scientists believe that, apart from a few species including homo sapiens, the Neanderthals, and a couple of other unknown species (like the hobbit man found in Flores in Indonesia), all of the pre and early-human species did not make it to the ice age that occurred around 10,000 years ago, or if they did, they died out very soon into it. By the end of this long ice age, only one species was left alive, homo sapiens. However, it is believed that new studies conducted after the rediscovery of a find from an archaeological dig site in a cave in China might just prove this theory wrong. So, let's take a look at everything we know so far about this new and startling discovery.

What was discovered?

In 1989, archaeologists found a set of fossilised remains in Maludong Cave in China, also known as Red Deer Cave. The various bones and other items were studied, and then housed in a museum in southeastern Yunnan. However, for whatever reason, one of the finds, a partial femur, was left unstudied for 25 years, and has recently been examined by a team of scientists, historians, and archaeologists, including Darren Curnoe, a palaeoanthropologist from the University of New South Wales in Australia, and Ji Xueping from the Chinese Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology. They published their findings in the peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the the Public Library of Science (PLOS), in which they suggest that the femur could belong to either homo erectus or homo habilis, or another similar, as yet unknown species.

Both of these species first walked the earth around 1.5 million years ago, but were believed to have died out prior to the ice age around 10,000 years ago. However, the bone is believed to be around 14,000 years old, which makes it younger than any other bone fragment or fossilised remains identified as that species.

What does this mean for the timetable of human history?

This discovery could forever change the way that we view the development of early and pre-humans, and therefore could alter our perception of human history and evolution. Prior to the publication of this research, the scientific consensus was that only Neanderthals, as well as some unknown species such as that found in Flores or in Siberia, survived the ice age along with homo sapiens. However, this seems to suggest that a species that was either homo erectus, homo habilis, or something similar and yet unknown, lived for much longer than we previously thought. This kind of discovery could have major implications for the timeline of human history and evolution, although until the research can be ratified, and until more discoveries of a similar kind are made that can corroborate these claims, it is still unclear as to what this means for how we understand the evolution of our species.