WASHINGTON: An ancient toolkit unearthed in the United Arab Emirates suggests modern humans may have left Africa over 100,000 years ago, much earlier than typically thought, researchers said on Thursday.

The tools found in the archaeological site at Jebel Faya include basic hand axes, hole punchers and scrapers, indicating that the user likely had a primitive level of skill, said the study published in the journal Science.

That would “imply that technological innovation was not necessary for early humans to migrate onto the Arabian Peninsula,” said the study by British and German archaeologists.

The team also examined climate and sea-level records for the region dating back 130,000 years and found that low sea levels meant the Bab al-Mandab strait that separates the Horn of Africa from the Arabian Peninsula would have been narrower and easier to cross.

Unlike the harsh desert conditions of today, the land would have been wetter and filled with more vegetation, lakes and rivers, making a journey by foot more feasible for early humans.

Using a technique called luminescence dating to determine the age of the toolkit, scientists believe it is between 100,000 and 125,000 years old, according to lead author Simon Armitage from Royal Holloway college, University of London.

Most other evidence has suggested modern humans left Africa around 60,000 years ago and made the trek along the Mediterranean Sea or the Arabian Coast.

“At Jebel Faya, the ages reveal a fascinating picture in which modern humans migrated out of Africa much earlier than previously thought, helped by global fluctuations in sea-level and climate change in the Arabian Peninsula,”said Armitage.

The international team of researchers was headed by Hans-Peter Uerpmann from Eberhard Karls University in Tubingen, Germany.—AFP