Fossils


Britain's 700,000 years of immigrants

· Pioneer man recorded as first human inhabitant
· Ice ages defeated seven attempts at colonisation

Humans have tried to colonise Britain on at least eight separate occasions in the past 700,000 years, palaeontologists said yesterday. On each occasion but the last populations were wiped out when an ice age arrived.

"British people today are new arrivals, we're products of only the last 12,000 years," said Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum. The findings, which mean that modern native Britons are descended from a continuous line younger than their counterparts in the Americas and Australia, are part of the five-year Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (Ahob) project, which concluded this month.
(snip)
A recent fossil discovery in Pakefield, Suffolk, was identified as a species called homo antecessor, nicknamed pioneer man, and was dated at 700,000 years old. It pushed back the first evidence of humans by some 200,000 years. Pioneer man was known to have lived in southern Europe 800,000 years ago and probably made the journey to Britain via a connecting land bridge.

Back then there were no Daily Mail or Daily Express screetching about how these 'immigrants' were going to take 'our jobs' and 'spread disease'.