Early humans could have lived on fertile plain in Persian Gulf

New research is suggesting some of the earliest humans could have lived in a a once fertile landmass flooded by the Persian Gulf some 75,000 to 100,000 years ago. At its peak, the floodplain now below the Gulf would have been about the size of Great Britain, and then shrank as water began to flood the area. Then, about 8,000 years ago, the land would have been swallowed up by the Indian Ocean.

The study is detailed in the December issue of the journal Current Anthropology and it has broad implications for aspects of human history. For instance, scientists have debated over when early modern humans exited Africa, with dates as early as 125,000 years ago and as recent as 60,000 years ago, according to study researcher Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist at the University of Birmingham in the UK.

The findings have sparked discussion among researchers, including Carter and Cerny, who were allowed to provide comments within the research paper, about who exactly the humans were who occupied the Gulf basin.

"Given the presence of Neanderthal communities in the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates River, as well as in the eastern Mediterranean region, this may very well have been the contact zone between moderns and Neanderthals," Rose told LiveScience. In fact, recent evidence from the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome suggests interbreeding, meaning we are part caveman."

New Tombs found at Bahariya Oasis Egypt

Egyptian archaeologists carrying out excavations at the site of a planned youth center have found 14 tombs dating back to the third century BC. One of the tombs had a female mummy adorned with incredible jewelry. The female mummy, found in the stair-lined interior of one of the rock-hewn tombs, was cast in colored plaster inlaid with jewelry and eyes.

Archaeologists, who dug at the site ahead of the planned construction of a youth center, found the tombs contained other treasures as well. The area has now been turned over to Egypt's antiquities authority.

The Greco-Roman tombs, in Bahariya Oasis (190 miles southwest of Cairo), were discovered during probes that indicated they may be part of a much larger necropolis, Egypt's Culture Ministry said in a statement Monday.

"Early investigations uncovered four anthropoid masks made of plaster, a gold fragment decorated with engravings of the four sons of Horus, and a collection of coins, and clay and glass vessels," the ministry's statement quoted Egypt's chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass as saying.

Bahariya Oasis is home to Egypt's famed Valley of the Golden Mummies, where a collection of 17 tombs with about 254 mummies was discovered in 1996.

Ancient Greenalnder's DNA surprises Scientists

Scientists received quite a surprise after they finished sequencing the DNA from frozen hairs of a Greenlander who died about 4,000 years ago. One of the goals was to find the origins of the Greenlander and see where his ancestry had come from.

Surprisingly, the man appears to have originated in Siberia and is unrelated to modern Greenlanders, Morten Rasmussen of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues found.

The DNA gives strong hints about the man, nicknamed Inuk. "Brown eyes, brown skin, he had shovel-form front teeth," Eske Willerslev, who oversaw the study, told a telephone briefing. Such teeth are characteristic of East Asian and Native American populations.

The man lived among the Saqqaq people, the earliest known culture in southern Greenland that lasted from around 2500 BC until about 800 BC. Scientists have disagreed on who these people were. Did they descend from the peoples who crossed the Bering Strait 30,000 to 40,000 years ago to settle the New World or whether they were more recent immigrants.