One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how different the geography of the UK and North Sea areas was in the fairly recent past - Doggerland, Viking Bergen island... the latter possibly washed away in the huge tsunami that hit the North Sea 8200BP:
If I remember correctly from the BBC article I read on it, it's not "earlier than thought", but earlier than we had proof for. Other non-human remains have already placed humans in Europe around that time.
What I find most interesting about this, is that the bones were originally thought to have come from Neanderthals. Now that they've been proven to be human, doubt has been cast on the assumption that Neanderthals shared some of the modern cultural traits of humans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_Bergen_Island
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide
[Edit: And all of this is a huge amount of time after the archeological finds of the actual article!]