Word: modern
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...group on the religious doctrine of Christian Identity, established in Los Angeles in the late 1940s by an anti-Semitic rabble rouser named Wesley Swift. Christian Identity holds that white Aryans are the authentic lost tribes of Israel, the true descendants of Adam and Eve. Jews of the modern world, on the other hand, are impostors--the spawn of Satan's union with Eve. Thus Jews, in the words of Swift, "must be destroyed." All other non-Anglo-Saxon peoples are beasts, "mud people...
...introduce Yeltsin's chosen heir to her audience, asked Putin for "a few words" about his family, he gave her a few: "Wife, two children. Two girls, 13 and 14 years old." Curtness, colleagues say, masks his real nature. He's a tough guy, they say, but an enlightened, modern one. Still, in addition to a fondness for wrestling and judo, he professes admiration for the iron discipline of Yuri Andropov, the former KGB boss who ruled the U.S.S.R. in the early 1980s. On the 85th anniversary of Andropov's birth in June, Putin laid flowers on his grave...
...half-ape known as Lucy appeared in Africa; eventually she begat a less apelike creature, who evolved in turn into something even more humanlike. Finally, after a few more begettings, Homo sapiens appeared. Except for that odd side branch known as the Neanderthals, the path from proto-apes to modern humans is commonly seen as a succession of new and improved species taking the place of worn-out evolutionary clunkers...
Scientists have also unearthed new fossils of known species. This should help them trace the complex relations among our sundry ancestors. One remarkable skeleton, announced this past spring, suggests that modern humans and Neanderthals may even have mated successfully. And new evidence of stone-tool use, dating as far back as 2.5 million years, has provided tantalizing clues to how our forebears thought and behaved...
These discoveries not only further confirm that multiple hominid species are the rule but also bring us much closer to understanding the ultimate mysteries of human evolution: What were the changes that led to modern humans? When did these changes take place, and why? And perhaps most intriguing, will we continue to evolve, or has Homo sapiens (wise man) made evolution obsolete...