The drawing of the fossilized shell found in Indonesia, perhaps the oldest record of a human ancestor ever found, claim a team from the Dutch University of Leiden.
As I said Rainsford, engraved drawing, which can be seen only under thinned lighting is at least 430,000 years old, which means that the work of extinct human ancestor.
Until now, the oldest known human entry was dated about 130,000 years.
If the results of the survey are confirmed, it will fundamentally change the current knowledge of the development of human culture.
- It could lead to a new writing of human history, told the BBC's Newsnight program, Stephen Manro, one of the participants in the research and author of the study.
Scientists from hundreds of fossils of freshwater mussels in place Trinil the Indonesian island of Java, has found a Dutch researcher Eugene Dubois in the late 19th century, and are kept in the Center biodiversity "Naturalis" in Leiden.
During the process of dating, researches found that engraved sample precedes process fossilization of shells, that is old between 430,000 and 540,000 years.
Manro says this discovery confirms the theory that Homo Erectus was more agile and more intelligent than previously believed.
- When we see something, whether it is an act of artistic or symbolic sign it immediately we rewrite itself, as something that is characteristic only of modern man, he mentioned.
He said there is still a clear difference between Homo sapiens and Homo Erectus, and that this our distant ancestor was even more similar than previously thought.