A.) (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin, Ireland, 1997). in Lithospheric Structure, Evolution And Sedimentation In Continental Rifts (Abstracts) (eds Jacob, A. The Middle Stone Age of East Africa and the beginnings of regional identity. in Sedimentation and Tectonics in Rift Basins: Red Sea-Gulf of Aden (eds Purser, B. Un aperçu des industries préhistoriques du golfe de Suez et du littoral Égyptien de la Mer Rouge. Découverte d’un biface Acheuléen dans les calcaires marins du golfe Pléistocène de l’Afar (Mer Rouge, Éthiopie). & Stringer, C.) 547– 564 (Princeton Univ. in The Human Revolution: Behavioural and biological perspectives on the origins of modern humans (eds Mellars, P. This new, widespread adaptive strategy may, in part, signal the onset of modern human behaviour, which supports an African origin for modern humans by 125 kyr ago. Together with similar, tentatively dated discoveries from South Africa 3 this is the earliest well-dated evidence for human adaptation to a coastal marine environment, heralding an expansion in the range and complexity of human behaviour from one end of Africa to the other. The geological setting of these artefacts shows that early humans occupied coastal areas and exploited near-shore marine food resources in East Africa by this time. Here we report the discovery of early Middle Stone Age artefacts in an emerged reef terrace on the Red Sea coast of Eritrea, which we date to the last interglacial (about 125 kyr ago) using U–Th mass spectrometry techniques on fossil corals. Direct palaeontological, archaeological and biological evidence is necessary to resolve this debate. The ‘multiregional evolution’ hypothesis argues that modern humans evolved semi-independently in Europe, Asia and Africa between 100,000 and 40,000 years ago 1, whereas the ‘out of Africa’ hypothesis contends that modern humans evolved in Africa between 200 and 100 kyr ago, migrating to Eurasia at some later time 2. The geographical origin of modern humans is the subject of ongoing scientific debate.

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