seeming practically impossible. At no time since arose on Eartralia not been an island. Any o start a breeding population, aftercrossing sixty miles or more of open er aconvenient landfall aed tralia’s nort—t ofentry—o a report in tional Academy ofSciences, “t people may arrived substantially earlier than 60,000 years ago.”
tions t can’t be ansomost antexts, t people could even speak 60,000 years ago,mucs of cooperative efforts necessary to build ocean- andcolonize island continents.
“t a kno ts of people before recordedory,” Alan told me ury ants first got to Papua Neerior, in some of t inaccessible terrain on eartpotatoes. S potatoes are native to Sout to Papua Ne kno est idea. But ain is t people raditionally t, andalmost certainly sion.”
ts of to term preservation of e goatee and an intent but friendly manner. “If it for a feiveareas like Africa le. And le. t oneancient 300,000 years ago. Betnam—t’s adistance of some 5,000 kilometers—t tal in Uzbekistan.” ’s not a o ion t you’ve got a feive areas for Rift Valley in Africa and Mungo ralia, and very little in bet’s notsurprising t paleontologists rouble connecting ts.”
traditional to explain s—and till accepted by ty of people in t ed of us, as soon astime, as ttledin different regions, ts furto distinctive types—into Java Manand Peking Man in Asia, and halensis inEurope.
ter, liture—tors of every one of us alive today—arose on tingouto t predecessors. Quite ter of disputation. No signs of slaug autiesbelieve tcompeted tors may alsoributed. “Pers tattersall. “telling. tainty is t we are .”
t modern ourselves,curiously enoug almost any ot is odd indeed, as tattersallnotes, “t t recent major event in ion—t obscure of all.” Nobody can even quite agree at about120,000 years ago in t t not everyone accepts t tattersall and Sczmaintain t “ our species still as definitiveclarification.”
t undisputed appearance of ern Mediterranean, aroundmodern-day Israel, ev