Ancient skull discovery suggests modern humans are hundreds of years older than we thought

A newly-reconstructed million-year-old skull could drastically rewrite our understanding of when and where modern humans first emerged.

Analysis of the fossil, found in China, suggests Homo sapiens, our species, split off from its ancestors 400,000 years earlier than previously thought – and possibly in Asia, not Africa.

The skull was found in Hubei Province in 1990 but was too badly crushed to be properly understood at the time.

Researchers were able to determine its age and assumed it belonged to Homo erectus, the first large-brained humans and an ancestor of Homo sapiens.

Previous evidence indicated Homo erectus evolved and split around 600,000 years ago into Homo sapiens, the Neanderthals, and a mysterious group known as the Denisovans.

But recent developments in scanning and virt