Bones show humans in Europe 1.2 mln years ago

Early humans may have roamed Europe as much as 1.2 million years ago, far earlier than previously thought, scientists said on Wednesday, based on fossils they found in northern Spain.

Researchers excavated a jaw bone, teeth and simple tools in a cave near the city of Burgos dated around 400,000 years older than the previously oldest-known remains found at a nearby site 14 years ago, a paper published in the journal Nature said.

The remains are accurately dated and lay to rest doubts about when early humans first lived in Europe, said Andreu Olle, who has worked at the Atapuerca site since 1990.

"These are the oldest human remains in Europe. With this fossil, we can say it (Europe) was populated earlier than was thought," he told Reuters.

The bones are similar to fossils thought to be 800,000 years old found at the same site in 1994, suggesting a continuous human presence in Western Europe.

Up to now archaeologists had found evidence of human activity in Spain, France and Italy around 1 million years ago but no human remains, only animal bones and stone tools.

Scientists generally agree that modern humans spread out of Africa starting about 50,000 years ago, quickly establishing Stone Age cultures throughout Europe, Asia and Australia.

However the fossil, thought to be from the 'Homo antecessor' species, would have shared common ancestors with modern man and may have mixed with the more recent newcomers from Africa.

Flakes of flint embedded in animal bones, suggesting the use of a crude knife, were amongst the finds discovered at the site last June.

The find adds weight to the theory that early humans spread from Africa via the Middle East, not across the Straits of Gibraltar separating Africa from Europe, because the jaw was a similar shape to one unearthed in the central Asian country of Georgia thought to be 1.7 million years old.

Scientists prove Napoleon not poisoned by British

Italian scientists say they have proved Napoleon was not poisoned, scotching the legend the French emperor was murdered by his British jailors.

File photo of an oil on canvas portrait "Napoleon at Fontainbleau" from the workshop of Paul Delaroche. Italian scientists say they have proved Napoleon was not poisoned, scotching the legend the French emperor was murdered by his British jailors. (REUTERS/Handout)

Napoleon's post-mortem said he died of stomach cancer aged 51, but the theory he was assassinated to prevent any return to power has gained credence in recent decades as some studies indicated his body contained a high level of the poison arsenic.

"It was not arsenic poisoning that killed Napoleon at Saint Helena," said researchers at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics and the University of Pavia who tested the theory the British killed him while he was in exile on the South Atlantic island in 1821.

The Italian research -- which studied hair samples from various moments in his life which are kept in museums in Italy and France -- showed Napoleon's body did have a high level of arsenic, but that he was already heavily contaminated as a boy.

The scientists used a nuclear reactor to irradiate the hairs to get an accurate measure of the levels of arsenic.

Looking at hairs from several of Napoleon's contemporaries, including his wife and son, they found arsenic levels were generally much higher than is common today.

"The result? There was no poisoning in our opinion because Napoleon's hairs contain the same amount of arsenic as his contemporaries," the researchers said in a statement published on the university's website.

The study found the samples taken from people living in the early 1800s contained 100 times as much arsenic than the current average. Glues and dyes commonly used at the time are blamed for high environmental levels of the toxic element.

"The environment in which people lived in the early 1800s evidently caused the intake of quantities of arsenic that today we would consider dangerous," the scientists said.

One theory was that Napoleon was poisoned accidentally by arsenic vapour from dyes in his wallpaper at Saint Helena, but the study showed there was no massive increase in arsenic levels in his latter years.

"It is clear that one cannot talk about a case of poisoning, but of a constant absorption of arsenic," the researchers said.

Napoleon had been exiled once before -- on the Italian island of Elba after his failed invasion of Russia. But he returned to France and was finally defeated at Waterloo in 1815 after which he was sent to the much more remote Saint Helena.