Discovery of oldest modern human out of Africa – Some context

out of africa

It’s an exciting new discovery, evidence that humans wandered out of Africa far earlier than has been previously appreciated. The media is quite rightly all over it, and has been trumpeting the details. For example … Washington Post – Scientists discover the oldest human fossils outside Africa BBC – Modern humans left Africa much earlier NPR – New … Read more

An Asian Origin for Human Ancestors?

Very interesting article in Science yesterday regarding origins … Researchers agree that our immediate ancestors, the upright walking apes, arose in Africa. But the discovery of a new primate that lived about 37 million years ago in the ancient swamplands of Myanmar bolsters the idea that the deep primate family tree that gave rise to … Read more

Butchering dinner 3.4 million years ago

Source: Nature — Aug 11, 2010 Early hominins were using stone tools to butcher meat as long ago as 3.4 million years, about 800,000 years earlier than previous evidence dates to, scientists report in this week’s issue of Nature. The finding comes from an examination of animal bones found last year in the Lower Awash … Read more