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Human History

A long time ago, something hominoid left footprints in a stretch of African mud. 

Enthusiasts have attempted to connect its origins to the water in an attempt to explain the human ability to hold the breath at will, the layer of blubber under their skin and a slight webbing between the fingers.   

We, however, are sticking with hominoids on dry land.  They change the ecology they inhabit.  They eat leaves.  Trees die.  The grass grows.  New types of edibles appear.  

Hominoids change the way they propel themselves through the tall grass as they look for the edibles.  They walk upright.  Courage, intelligence and experimentation help them control fire and adapt natural materials such as wood and stone into tools.

Hominoids remain hominoids because they behave like animals.

Then, models for the classic iconography of the caveman, the big boned, muscular Neanderthals occupy caves in Southern France.  They have a unique anatomy, human rather than hominoid.   They care for injured siblings and bury their dead.  

But there, in the same eco-system, at the same time, a different kind of human, homo sapien sapien, appears.  

Homo sapien sapien are more upright with a more brain friendly cranium.  They possess objects of ornamentation, pierced beads and carvings of fat females.   Ornaments made of shells are found far from the sea.  They were carried there by trade or migration.  

These are people who altered their environment with conscious purpose.  Symbols and images are carved and sprayed and daubed onto the stone cave walls.  Clearings and circles are formed around fires. 

Genetic evidence, mother-only mitocondrial DNA, suggests that Homo Sapien Sapien simply replaced Neanderthal.  However, an assimilation theory speculating that these separate species interbred and evolved has some appeal amongst followers of the subject.   For a considerable period,  Neanderthal, Homo Sapien Sapien [modern],Homo Sapien [archaic],Homo Erectus [Asia] were simultaneously procreating in a region stretching from Russia to the Iberian penninsula.   Perhaps this is evidence of a legitimate grouping of four .

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