Evolution

The first solid evidence of human use of fire in Eurasia as early as 790,000 years ago has been found in excavations in Israel conducted by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute of Archaeology. The discovery was made in excavations, which have been conducted over seven seasons, at the Benot Ya’aqov bridge site along the Dead Sea rift in the Hula Valley ofnorthern Israel.

According to Prof. Naama Goren-Inbar, head of the Institute of Archaeology and director of the Benot Ya’aqov excavations, this is the best evidence yet found for human use of fire during the period of the Acheulian culture (from approximately 1.8 million years to 250,000 years ago). An article on the discovery of this early use of fire appears in the current issue of the journal Science. The article details findings of burned fragments offlint, wood, fruit and grains, indicating that the early humans living at Benot Ya’aqov knew how to control fire and use it to process food. Additional concentrations of burned flint were also found in distinct areas of the site, suggesting that the inhabitants made hearths for cooking and possibly as a site for gatherings. Read FullArticle

The Neanderthals reached adulthood at the tender age of 15 according to a report in the journal Nature. French and Spanish researchers analysed growth records preserved in the teeth of Neanderthals, modern humans and two other human species. Breaks in the deposition of crown enamelreveal how fast teeth grow.

Neanderthals formed their crowns 15% quicker than we do, reaching adulthood when modern humans of the same age were still floundering in adolescence.Perikymata are disturbances in the deposition of crown enamel which are preserved on the tooth's surface as a series of horizontal ridges. More closely-spaced perikymata indicate a slowerrate of growth, while more widely-spaced perikymata point to faster growth. In modern humans (Homo sapiens) tooth growth slows dramatically after the formation of the top half of the crown. This leads to more closely-spaced perikymata in the bottom half of the crown.Read FullArticle

Chimps and humans differ by only a tiny percentage in their genetic make-up, but the reason why they're in trees and we're not lies in who has the most active genes, a leading scientist said Monday. Svante Paabo, who has beenhelping to decipher the genetic code of chimps, said the key lies in the degree to which genes are used in each species.Human and chimpanzee genomes differ by just 1.2 percent, he told the annual meeting in Berlin of the Human Genome Organization.Yet around 10 percent of the genes are differently active, said Paabo, who studies atthe Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, eastern Germany.According to Paabo, the genes responsible for our sense of smell worsened as those responsible for speech and language ability improved.

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Piltdown Man was the sensational discovery of a fossil human ancestor in southern England in 1908. It was a classic story of a dogged amateur collector, Charles Dawson, striking it rich. He fished a human-like skull and an ape-like jawbone out of a gravel quarry and took them to noted paleontologist Arthur Smith Woodward at the Natural History Museum in London. Smith Woodward immediately realized their significance, accompanied Dawson to the Piltdown site and found some ancient animal teeth and more "human" bones. The word of the discovery of Piltdown spread quickly, especially in England, where fossil expertshad been forced to watch enviously as fabulous fossils like Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon were discovered on the continent.

Although the fossil was controversial from the beginning (as early as 1915, skeptics argued that the jawbone and the skull had come from different animals), it was accepted as England's signature contribution to the study of human prehistory and remained that way until 1953. Only then was it revealed to be a fake, the jawbone belonging to an ancient orangutan, with the teeth filed down to look more human, and the skull, although human, dyed reddish to make it appear aged.A fake! But who was to blame? Dawson was obviously the prime suspect, an amateur who needed a big discovery to secure the approval of the professionals and who hadwhined to Smith Woodward that he was "waiting for the big find that never seems to come along." But what made the Piltdown mystery even much more intriguing was the idea that there might have been a "second man," someone who might have provided expertise or even some of the fossils that apparently had been secreted in the quarry. But who might that second man have been?

View: Full Article | Source: The Star