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Stone Age Blades May Have Led to Population Boom

from Scientific American

Technological innovations have enabled human cultures to thrive, and now researchers have discovered what might be the oldest example known so far of such an occurrence. These ancient innovations are in the form of miniature stone blades, which appear to have contributed to a population boom in south Asia.

Recent genetic research of people across the globe suggests that roughly 45,000 to 20,000 years ago, one of the most dramatic population booms after humanity dispersed from Africa occurred in southern Asia, leading to "the highest population densities in the world in prehistory," explains Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford in England.

After studying mitochondrial data from people in India and neighboring regions, Petraglia and archaeologist Ravi Korisettar of Karnatak University in Dharwad, India, and their collaborators refined the timing of this population boom to between 35,000 and 28,000 years ago. "Why this population expansion happened is a bit of a mystery," Petraglia says.