Archaeologists in South Africa have recently unearthed some of the earliest evidence of human behavior - a cache of ostrich eggs dating back 60,000 years, etched with intricate geometric designs.
The abstract carvings are signs of what archaeologists call 'symbolic thinking,' a capacity particular to Homo sapiens. Unlike earlier hominids, our brains allow us to affix meaning to objects, to draw associations, to recognize and create symbols.
Symbolic thinking is the roots of writing, language and art; it is, to risk grandiosity, what makes us human.
So when the team at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, led by prehistorian Pierre-Jean Texier, dug up the 60,000-year-old decorated ostrich eggs, they knew they'd found something special. The eggs suggest that we 'became human' - i.e. started creating art, decorating objects and thinking symbolically - 20,000 earlier than scholars had originally thought.
This very special exhibition presents the original skull of the earliest hominin ever found outside Africa; the Dmanisi Skull. The discovery of this skull in Georgia has raised many questions about human evolution from all over the world. Neither the skulls age of 1.8 million years and small brain size nor the locality where it was found fitted the previous theories on our ancestors' migration.
This is the first time the skull has been taken out of the vaults of the Georgia National Museum in Tbilisi and shown to the public, which makes the exhibition a fitting conclusion to the Darwin year in Naturalis.
The Dmanisi skull features prominently in scientific debates on the origins of mankind. The fact that this ancestor of Homo erectus turned up in a region outside Africa as early as 1.8 million years ago is astounding. Scholars used to think that our ancestors could not have left Africa until their brains had become larger. But these emigrants had relatively small brains, and so the conventional theories had to be rethought.
How does one transport a 1.8 million-year-old skull that might rewrite the history of mankind and has never before left the vault of the National Historic Museum in Tbilisi, Georgia? Very carefully, of course! The only person allowed to travel with the The 'Dmanisi Skull' - which suggests a Eurasian chapter in the long evolutionary story of man - is Professor David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgian National Museum who brought the extra-ordinary find to the Naturalis Museum, Leiden for a special exhibition to end their one-year celebration of evolutionary scientist Charles Darwin.
Submitted by Sean Williams on Wed, 11/18/2009 - 17:26
Humans get their linguistic functions from the left side of the brain (the left cerebral hemisphere, to use the proper semantics - more to come). But why? How did we begin using this 'hemispheric lateralisation' (told you!); setting us on the road to modern language? A team of American experts claims chimpanzees, our nearest cousins, hold the key.
The group, from Yerkes National Primate Research Centre in Atlanta, Georgia, recently completed a study of 70 chimpanzees over a ten-month time period (published in Elsevier's Cortex, Jan 2010), recording their communicative gestures both towards humans and each other. Specific movements included 'arm threat', 'extended arm' and 'hand-slap', fulfilling social roles like attention-seeking, excitement, threat, reconciliation, grooming, play or aggression.
Archaeologists in South Africa have recently unearthed some of the earliest evidence of human behavior - a cache of ostrich eggs dating back 60,000 years, etched with intricate geometric designs. 
This very special exhibition presents the original skull of the earliest hominin ever found outside Africa; the Dmanisi Skull. The discovery of this skull in Georgia has raised many questions about human evolution from all over the world. Neither the skulls age of 1.8 million years and small brain size nor the locality where it was found fitted the previous theories on our ancestors' migration.
How does one transport a 1.8 million-year-old skull that might rewrite the history of mankind and has never before left the vault of the National Historic Museum in Tbilisi, Georgia? Very carefully, of course! The only person allowed to travel with the The 'Dmanisi Skull' - which suggests a Eurasian chapter in the long evolutionary story of man - is Professor 
