20,000 year old teeth discovered in Sri Lanka show evidence that early humans moved into the rainforests much earlier than scientists previously thought. A study published on Thursday in Science journal explains that the teeth of 26 ancient human remains were excavated and examined, showing signs of rainforests habitation. Tooth enamel samples were taken with a diamond-tipped drill and examined under a mass spectrometer. In every single sample, scientists found evidence indicating that the diets of these humans when they were alive consisted almost completely of food found in the rainforest.

 

A University of Oxford Archeologist, Patrick Roberts, said, “Humans have been manipulating and living within dynamic rainforest environments for at least 20,000 years and probably even longer…The lifestyle, as we can see, was dedicated rainforest subsistence.” Before this most recent discovery, there was no evidence found to suggest that humans lived in rainforests earlier than 10,000 years ago.

 

Rainforests present a challenging environment to live in as a human. They are packed with dense vegetation that can make it hard to navigate, small, nimble prey animals that would be hard to catch, and lots of dangerous animals and plants that can be poisonous. Mike Petraglia, another researcher on the study and University of Oxford archeologist, says that it is clear that hunter-gatherer communities in modern day Sri Lanka learned to adapt to the environment and reap its benefits. There are some other less solid examples of evidence suggesting the humans may have taken to the rainforests earlier than 20,000 years ago, but this is the most concrete evidence to date.