Word: modern
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...Neanderthals disappeared has been around for decades: perhaps they were eliminated by interbreeding with us. Maybe we all carry a bit of Neanderthal in our DNA. Two years ago, molecular biologists tested that hypothesis by extracting some DNA from a Neanderthal fossil and comparing it with that of modern humans. Their conclusion: the differences are great enough to rule out significant interbreeding, even though such mating would have been biologically possible...
...single prehistoric one-night stand--except that the last true Neanderthals had disappeared from the area at least 3,000 years earlier. Plenty of experts are unwilling to be swayed by romance, however--especially the American Museum's Ian Tattersall, who says flatly, "It's just a chunky modern kid. There's nothing special about...
What may have happened, suggests Tattersall, is that some 50,000 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...
Vintage scooterists scorn the strictly practical Hondas and Yamahas--and dub them "Tupperware." Possessing more cachet are new bikes that boast classic style but modern components, like ItalJet's Velocifero and Dragster models, favorites of Michael Stipe and Martha Stewart. ("Vintage without the repairs," says ItalJet USA's Joel Sacher.) Even these don't cut it with diehards like New York lawyer Tom Giordano. "Finding a charming, rusted-out relic and turning it into a jewel," he says, "that's a big part of the love affair...