* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Homo Sapiens

Blobrana · L

Fossil footprints of early modern humans found in Tanzania

Newly discovered fossil footprints at a site in northern Tanzania on the shore of Lake Natron capture a moment in time around 120,000 years ago when a band of 18 humans--early members of our own species, Homo sapiens --traipsed across wet volcanic ash to an unknown destination. Brian Richmond of George Washington University unveiled the stunning find here on April 13 at the annual meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society.
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Blobrana · L

Tectonic plates will shift, volcanoes will erupt, solar storms will blow our way, and the occasional meteorite or other celestial debris will collide with the Earth. The Earth's crust is constantly in motion -- and has been since long before our species made its recent appearance.
All of our hopes, wishes and engineering efforts will not prevent these eventualities from occurring and forcing us to try to deal with the consequences.
Mankind's track record in modifying the environment is replete with unintended consequences. I shudder to think of what the consequences would be of further human efforts to "tame" the Earth.
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Blobrana · L

Study says use of fire relatively recent in Europe

Most archaeologists agree that the use of fire is tied to colonization outside Africa, especially in Europe where temperatures fall below freezing, wrote Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University in the Netherlands and Paola Villa of the University of Colorado.
Yet, while there is evidence of early humans living in Europe as much as a million years ago, the researchers found no clear traces of regular use of fire before about 400,000 years ago.
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Blobrana · L

The first hominins to migrate into Europe may have done so without fire.

The logical argument that ancient human ancestors had to have mastered fire before departing balmy Africa for the often freezing climes of Europe is being challenged by a review revealing that there is no evidence to support the idea.
Wil Roebroeks at Leiden University in the Netherlands and Paola Villa at the University of Colorado Museum in Boulder, searched the European archaeological record for fires and found that the earliest possible evidence comes from two 400,000-year-old sites, one in England that seems to have the remains of an ancient hearth and one in Germany that has a charred wooden tool and heated flint present. Older sites in England, Italy and Spain showed no evidence of fire mastery. These observations are problematic because ancient human ancestors migrated into the cold European climate more than a million years ago, implying that they survived for 600,000 or so without fire.
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Blobrana · L

Scientists believe men once had small spines on their genitalia such as those found in chimpanzees, cats and mice.
Analysis of the genomes of humans, chimpanzees and macaques indicates that a DNA sequence thought to play a role in the production of these spines have been deleted in humans, but has been preserved in other primates
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Blobrana · L

Southern Africa origins for humans, study suggests

Modern humans may have originated from southern Africa, an extensive genetic study has suggested.
Data showed that hunter-gatherer populations in the region had the greatest degree of genetic diversity, which is an indicator of longevity.
It says that the region was probably the best location for the origin of modern humans, challenging the view that we came from eastern Africa.
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Blobrana · L

A genetic study challenges the idea that modern humans evolved in eastern Africa.

A genetic analysis of modern hunter-gatherer populations in Africa suggests that humans evolved in the south of the continent, rather than the east, as has been thought. The work presents a major challenge to evidence from anthropology, as the earliest anatomically modern human skulls have all been found in eastern Africa; and to genetics, as humans in the rest of the world all carry a subset of genes found specifically in eastern Africa.
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Blobrana · L

Australopithecus africanus

Blobrana · L

RE: Homo Sapiens