Interesting Facts

A piece of upper-jaw discovered in Kents Cavern, Devon, southern England, suggests that humans were living in England as long as 44,000 years ago. (This is the earliest indication of human habitation in the UK, and proves that homo-sapiens and Neanderthals coexisted for about three to five thousand years in this part of the world. A nice part of the world too, they obviously had good taste.)

Researchers at Harvard University have deduced that early humans cooked up their first hot meals more than 1.9m years ago. (They base their findings on tooth size and how much time was spent actually eating (cooked food requires less chewing than raw). Homo erectus, who emerged in Africa around 1.9m years ago, spent 6.1% of its time eating and Neanderthals, spent 7% of their time, but more primitive species, such as Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis, who emerged before Homo erectus and the Neanderthals, spent 7.2% and 9.5% of their day eating. If the estimates are right, it suggests they may have been less accomplished cooks than Homo erectus and the Neanderthals. Maybe the English are more closely related to them.)

According to research from Russia's ANO Laboratory of Prehistory, European Neanderthals may have been wiped out by a catastrophic volcanic eruption over 40,000 years ago. (A new study says that a massive explosion caused the onset of a 'volcanic winter' that devastated their population. Modern homo sapiens may have survived the fall-out because much of their population was in Africa which was unaffected, and they went on to replace the Neanderthals about 30,000 years ago. Of course Neanderthals may have interbred with modern humans, so there may be a bit of Neanderthal in all of us.)