Word: homo
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...Homo rudolfensis...
...Homo sapiens...
...unusually rich trove of fossils has been found at two sites in northern Spain's Atapuerca mountains. One, known as Gran Dolina, has yielded 800,000-year-old hominids that Spanish researchers believe are a new species, perhaps the most recent common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals. Named Homo antecessor (Latin for explorer or pioneer), they had a primitive jaw and prominent brow ridges but a projecting face, sunken cheekbones and tooth development similar to that of modern humans...
What occurred some 200,000 years later, when Homo sapiens first met their Neanderthal cousins--the only other hominid species that hadn't dwindled into extinction--is a matter of much speculation, scientific and otherwise. Our species would end up the only one left standing, but whatever happened to the Neanderthals didn't happen quickly. Plentiful archaeological evidence proves that Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis inhabited the same general turf in many parts of Europe and the Middle East for thousands of years. That doesn't prove, however, that they lived as peaceable neighbors. Populations were so sparse that...
...years after modern humans arose, we began using our brains in a fundamentally different way. Despite their burials, for example, the Neanderthals left no clear evidence of any ritual or any belief in an afterlife. Nor is there any hint of Neanderthal language. Most telling of all, Homo sapiens began, some 40,000 years ago, to create art in an astonishing variety of forms, including cave paintings and female statuettes...