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Possible New Human Species Discovered In China
BayaWeaver writes "These are exciting times in anthropology. Recent analysis of fossils first discovered in China in 1979 indicate that a human-like species may have co-existed with modern humans as late as 11,500 years ago. This presumably new species has been nicknamed Red Deer Cave people because of their apparent taste for the extinct giant red deer. Other species recently discovered include: the 'hobbits' on the Indonesian island of Flores which are also thought to have been around until 12,000 years ago and the Denisovans discovered in 2010 that co-existed with modern humans in Siberia about 30,000 years ago."
Possibly they did. By many of the paintings, there are symbols etched/painted. These are generally ignored, but it is entirely possible that this was proto-writing and new research is going into studying them.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/mar/11/cave-painting-symbols-language-evolution
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The alphabet was certainly the next big innovation, phonetic, easier to learn, could be applied to different languages without all the awkwardness one found in applying Sumerian systems to unrelated languages like Akkadian. In the history of writing it was the next big thing up until the printing press. Still, you have to give the earliest inventors of writing the credit, it still stands in my mind as the greatest single achievement of the human mind, from it springing pretty much everything we see today.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.