New dating evidence places ‘Ubeidiya, an archaeological site in the Jordan Valley, at least 1.9 million years old. That makes it roughly as old as Dmanisi in Georgia and among the earliest known sites of human activity outside Africa. Earlier estimates generally put ‘Ubeidiya between 1.2 million and 1.6 million years old.
The revised timeline comes from three complementary dating approaches. A ScienceDaily report drawing on material provided by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem says the work was led by Prof. Ari Matmon of the Hebrew University, Prof. Omry Barzilai of the University of Haifa and Prof. Miriam Belmaker of the University of Tulsa. The underlying paper is listed in Quaternary Science Reviews.
The methods examined different records preserved in and around the site. Cosmogenic isotope burial dating uses isotopes formed in rocks exposed to cosmic rays; after burial, those isotopes decay at known rates. Measuring what remains can help estimate how long the rocks have been underground. A second approach examined magnetic orientations preserved in lake sediments and compared them with known reversals of Earth’s magnetic field. That evidence placed the deposits in the Matuyama Chron, which began more than two million years ago. For a third line of evidence, the team used uranium-lead dating on fossilized freshwater snail shells. The shells helped establish a minimum age for geological layers containing the stone tools.
Together, the approaches point to a site at least 1.9 million years old, substantially older than previous estimates based on comparisons with other archaeological and geological evidence. “At least” matters: the reported age is a minimum, not an exact date for when people first used the site. The dating constrains the deposits associated with the archaeological evidence; it does not identify a particular day, year or human group.
The result places ‘Ubeidiya alongside Dmanisi as one of the oldest known locations of early human activity beyond Africa. The sites’ similar ages suggest that ancient human populations were expanding into different regions around the same time. The comparison adds an earlier timeframe to the story of dispersal into the Levant, though the age match alone does not establish the route or relationship between the populations at the two sites.
‘Ubeidiya is also known for evidence of the Acheulean stone-tool tradition, including large tools shaped on both sides, such as hand axes. The report contrasts Acheulean tools with the relatively simple tools associated with the Oldowan tradition. Evidence from ‘Ubeidiya and Dmanisi raises the possibility that distinct groups carried different toolmaking traditions out of Africa during overlapping periods, rather than one technology spreading in a single sequence. The account presents this as an interpretation to investigate, not a settled identification of the toolmakers or their migration paths.
One dating result initially seemed to complicate the picture. Early cosmogenic-isotope measurements suggested that some rocks were about three million years old—older than the age indicated by the site’s magnetic, fossil, geological and archaeological evidence. The researchers attributed this mismatch to a complex history of sediment movement in the Dead Sea rift: some material had been buried long before it was transported and deposited again near the ancient lake at ‘Ubeidiya. Its earlier burial history therefore did not date the archaeological layers themselves. Accounting for that recycling helped reconcile the measurements.
By refining the age of the deposits, the study strengthens the case that human activity beyond Africa was underway at least 1.9 million years ago. It also leaves an important question open: whether the different tool traditions found at early sites reflect separate populations moving beyond Africa at similar times.