14 DAY TRIAL // Scientists writing in yesterday's issue of the journal Scientific Reports argue that a now extinct species of early humans inhabited present-day China nearly 1.7 million years ago.
These humans reportedly knew how to make and use stone tools, researchers explain.
Thus, numerous artifacts dating back to the Stone Age have been discovered at several sites west of Beijing over the past few decades.
The tools are believed to have been used for cutting and scrapping.
According to Live Science, archaeologists first assumed that these stone tools were roughly 1 million years old.
However, recent tests have shown that they are at least 600,000 – 700,000 years older than initially estimated.
Specialists suspect the artifacts were left behind by Home erectus, a species that they say is “thought to be ancestral to Homo sapiens.”