:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 6.16.2003 ::
:: Oldest Homo Sapiens Fossils Found, Experts Say ::
From National Geographic News
By John Roach
Three fossil skulls recovered from the windswept scrabble of Ethiopia's dry and barren Afar rift valley lend archaeological credence to the theory that modern humans evolved in Africa before spreading around the world.
The fossils include two adult males and one child and are estimated to be 160,000 years old. They were found among stone tools and butchered hippopotamus bones. Cut marks on the skulls suggest an early form of mortuary practice.
Prior to the discovery of these fossils, evidence for the out-of-Africa theory of evolution for modern humans was largely based on the analysis of genetic variation in people alive today. Archaeological evidence from 100,000 to 300,000 years ago was scarce.
As a result, another theory that modern humans evolved simultaneously in various parts of the world at roughly the same time from ancient local populations, such as the Neandertals in Europe, maintained plausible traction.
Timothy White, a paleoanthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley, said that the fossils he and his colleagues found in Ethiopia fill this gap in the archaeological record and support the argument that Neandertal was an evolutionary side branch unrelated to modern humans.
posted by me
:: 2:07:00 PM [+] ::
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