'Java Man' overlapped modern man: Experts

WASHINGTON (UPI): An international team of researchers says that modern humanity's long-lost relative "Java Man" survived much longer on Earth than previously thought, even overlapping with the early years of our species.

Carl Swisher III from the Berkeley Geochronology Center says there is no evidence yet that the two species met face-to-face.

He says the overlap fits a trend in revising theories of human evolution that now places several human and humanlike creatures living on Earth at the same time.

Swisher says being alone on Earth now as the only human species may turn out to be unusual.

He coordinated an effort to redo the dates for Indonesian fossils of Homo erectus, aka Java Man.

Previous age estimates for the fossil site called Ngandong ranged from a million years old to merely 300,000 years. But the site may be much younger -- only 27,000 to 53,000 years old, say Swisher and colleagues in the journal Science.

If the dates prove accurate, the Indonesian fossils come from the youngest Homo erectus known. Even after modern humans and Neanderthals had appeared, Swisher says, "we still had Homo erectus hanging around."

Scientists at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and the University of Florida in Gainesville worked with Swisher on the controversial problem of setting dates for the site.

Indonesian scientists at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta and the Geological Research and Development Center in Bandung also contributed to the project.