* Astronomy

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RE: Homo Sapiens

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Homo floresiensis

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RE: Homo Sapiens

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A team of scientists working in Georgia has unearthed the remains of four human-like creatures dating to 1.8 million years ago.
In the journal Nature, the researchers outline details of the partial skeletons uncovered in a Medieval town.
The bones reveal a mixture of primitive and advanced features, team leader David Lordkipanidze explained.
These early hominids may have been among the first to leave Africa to colonise the rest of the world.

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Much has been unearthed about Neanderthal Man since a skull and bones were famously dug out of the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf in 1856. But not since that date has there been such excitement about this archaic form of humanity. He was a thick-set, muscular sort with a tough jaw, but diminutive chin. Not very tall, but with more intelligence than originally given credit, the Neanderthal occupied much of Europe for about 200,000 years prior to the arrival of anatomically modern humans our own species, Homo sapiens.
Yet there is one enduring puzzle about this early cousin of ours that is now engaging scientists in frenzied debate. If the Neanderthal managed to survive for so long and lived through an ice age, what caused them to disappear? Was it, as some have suggested, a period of intense climate change that even they could not adapt to?

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Gorham's Cave

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RE: Homo Sapiens

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Did prehistoric man come from Haifa?

The audience, the stage and the set are ready. Only the guest of honour is missing - "and everyone is waiting for him," says Prof. Mina Evron, a researcher in the Archaeology Department of the University of Haifa and the codirector of excavations at Misliya Cave, southwest of Mt. Carmel.
The 'guest' that she and a team of researchers are seeking in the cave area is a skeleton that could represent early humans.
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Archaeologists have discovered ancient cave formations in Israel, which they say, provides the first concrete evidence that climate changes allowed early humans to migrate out of Africa.
The researchers studied stalactites and stalagmites, or speleothems, found in five caves deep in the Negev Desert in southern Israel.
The growth patterns of the formations, which only develop in the presence of rainwater, revealed a major cluster of unusually rainy periods beginning some 140,000 years ago.
They said the rainy spells matched the period of the first modern human settlements in the Middle East.

We found that the period of enhanced rainfall allowing the growth of speleothems occurred roughly 140,000 to 110,000 years ago, with its height being 130,000 to 125,000 years ago - Anton Vaks, a doctoral student with the Geological Survey of Israel (GSI) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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Desert speleothems reveal climatic window for African exodus of early modern humans
Anton Vaks, Hebrew University, Institute of Earth Sciences, Edmond Safra Givat Ram Campus, Jerusalem 91904, Israel; et al. pages 831-834.

The African origin of early modern humans 200,000150,000 years ago is now well documented, with archaeological data suggesting that a major migration from tropical east Africa to the Levant took place between 130,000 and 100,000 years ago via the presently hyper-arid Saharan-Arabian desert. This migration was dependent on the occurrence of wetter climate in the region. Whereas there is good evidence that the southern and central Saharan-Arabian desert experienced increased monsoon precipitation during this period, no unequivocal evidence has been found for a corresponding rainfall increase in the northern part of the migration corridor, including the Sinai-Negev land bridge between Africa and Asia. Passage through this bottleneck region would have been dependent on the development of suitable climate conditions. Vaks et al. present a reconstruction of paleoclimate in the Negev Desert based on absolute uranium series dating of carbonate cave deposits (speleothems). Speleothems only form when rainwater enters the groundwater system and vegetation grows above a cave. Today the climate in the Negev Desert is very arid and speleothems do not form, but their presence in a number of caves clearly indicates that conditions were wetter in the past. Vaks et al. dated 33 speleothem samples from five caves in the central and southern Negev Desert. The ages of these speleothems show that the last main period of increased rainfall occurred between 140,000 and 110,000 years ago. The climate during this time consisted of episodic wet events that enabled the deserts of the northeastern Sahara, Sinai, and the Negev to become more hospitable for the movement of early modern humans. The simultaneous occurrence of wet periods in the northern and southern parts of Saharan-Arabian desert could have led to the disappearance of the desert barrier between central Africa and the Levant. The humid period in the Negev Desert between 140,000 and 110,000 years ago was preceded and followed by essentially unbroken arid conditions; thus creating a climatic "window" for early modern human migration to the Levant. Vaks et al.s study suggest that climate change had an important limiting role in the timing of dispersal of early modern humans out of Africa.

Source: Geological Society of America