National Geographic: Mysteries of Mankind Page #5

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at three-dimensional structures.

It seems likely that marks

on bones found

in sandy soil may remain open

to interpretation.

But for others,

Shipman has found that

what distinguish a true cutmark

are the fine lines within a groove.

Experimenting, she says,

is the best way

to suggest what happened

to a bone thousands or millions

of years ago.

The problem for us today

is to tease out of the past,

to coax out of the evidence

the specialness of early hominids.

And once we know where we started

and how we started

and what was important then,

we may have a very different idea

of what it is to be human.

Homo erectus was the

first human species to leave Africa.

Sometime after a million years ago,

their fossil remains,

and those of a number

of African mammals,

first appear in other tropical regions

of the world.

Some scientists believe that

by then meat had become an

appreciable part of the diet.

With the addition

of this important protein,

this intelligent and curious creature

would have been well equipped

to expand out to unknown lands.

We know from preserved remains and

tools that erectus reached China,

Java and southern Europe.

On the Sussex coast of England,

quarry workers were the first

to unearth a site called Boxgrove.

It may hold answers to the life style

of the species that came

after Homo erectus.

About 350,000 years old,

Boxgrove is

an unusually important site.

It covers a hundred acres,

and it contains vast numbers of tools

and animal bones that

are extraordinarily well preserved.

Erectus probably never reached

this far north in Europe,

but his descendants did.

They were the earliest form

of our own species, Homo sapiens.

Here flags mark the locations

where their tools

or fragments have been found.

Animal bones abound.

Deer teeth.

Part of the lower iaw of

an extinct bear.

A large pelvic bone with cutmarks

that hint at a tool user's presence.

Yet strangely,

no human remains have been found.

So untouched is the site that if one

could peer back through the centuries,

here would sit an ancestor

chipping stone to make a tool.

Nearby, what may have been that very

tool is held again in a human hand

for the first time in 350,000 years.

Perhaps it was used to scrape wood,

prepare a hide, or dig for roots

in the ground.

It may have helped kill the deer

or bring down the bear.

But where is the maker of the tool?

Once Boxgrove was a beach front,

ideal for the preservation of fossils.

Why no people have been found remains

iust another missing piece

in the human puzzle.

These pre modern Homo sapiens

seemingly evolved from Homo erectus,

but their exact relationship

to erectus,

as well as to the more modern humans

who followed, is still unclear.

One of the most puzzling of these pre

modern Homo sapiens was Neandertal.

Some scientists think they were a short

lived side branch on the family tree.

Indeed, the longest ongoing controversy

in paleoanthropology has been

who were the Neandertals?

But there are more questions

than answers.

We do know the Neandertals

were not the dimwitted brutes

so often portrayed by cartoonists.

But one characteristic attributed

to them is true.

They were cave people.

At Kebara Cave in Israel,

a Neandertal excavation in run iointly

by Israeli and French teams.

When carefully studied,

layers in a cave can tell a rich story.

Too often in the past they were dug

with reckless abandon.

Thirty years ago Kebara was attacked

with pickaxe and shovel.

Today, dental probes and fine brushes

move methodically, inch by inch.

Each pail of dirt is screened for even

the tiniest fragment of bone or stone.

Each piece will then be washed,

identified, labeled, and catalogued.

By far the greatest number

of finds at Kebara

have been these well fashioned tools.

Literally hundreds of thousands

have been unearthed.

The leader of the Israeli team

is Professor Ofer Bar Yosef.

He has clear evidence that over

many thousands of years

Neandertals repeatedly occupied

Kebara Cave.

What we can see here

are the fireplaces as built

by the people around

And this is one of

the special features of Kebara Cave

that we can see these fireplaces

which are built one on top

of the other

and always at the same place

in the central area of the cave.

They were either heating the area

of the cave during wintertime

or also using them for cooking.

And then when you still have

the hot ashes,

spreading them

so they can sleep on them.

One problem that we should always keep

in mind is that we cannot

and we should not perhaps excavate

the entire cave area

because we have to preserve part of

it for future archaeologists

who will probably use better techniques

of excavation or better approaches.

And, therefore, we'll never know

the entire picture

of what really happened everywhere.

We do know Neandertals camped

in this natural shelter,

or at least came here with food,

perhaps huddling in groups around

the warmth of a fire.

We also know some of them died here.

Neandertals were the first people

to bury their dead.

This skeleton,

except for the missing skull which

may have been used in some ritual,

is among the most

complete Neandertals ever found.

What the meaning of burials was in the

life of these long vanished ancestors

cannot be known for certain.

But the fact that they buried

their dead links them

to us in deep and meaningful ways.

From Neandertal excavations throughout

Europe and the Middle East,

a picture of how they lived

has gradually emerged.

Theirs was a non-settled existence.

A socially organized people,

they traveled in groups

as they moved from place to place

in search of food.

Hardy and robust, they were probably

much stronger than most modern people.

They survived even in

harsh Ice Age conditions.

Whether they had language

as we know it is unclear.

But surely, in some sophisticated way,

they communicated with their own.

Then about 30 to 40,000 years ago

these intelligent,

well-adapted people

mysteriously disappeared.

They may or may not have evolved

into modern Homo sapiens.

If modern Homo sapiens evolved

elsewhere and then migrated,

Neandertals may have simply

lost out to them.

Anatomically much like us,

these early modern humans stood

at the threshold of

everything we usually define as human.

Farming and the rise of

great cities would await a later time.

But these early modern humans were

the very first to create fine art.

This rich record of the past

ranks among the greatest artistic

achievements of humankind.

We know these people spread to every

habitable part of the globe,

but where had they come from?

One scientist at the British Museum

of Natural History in London

thinks the answer has been found.

Physical anthropologist

Dr. Chris Stringer.

The research on the origin of

modern people is interesting obviously

because it deals with the origins

of all living people alive today.

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