prehistoric (Page 10)

We almost went the way of the dinosaur. Humans came close to extinction 70,000 years ago, when genetic research shows that there were only about 2,000 of us alive. Just one major disease or environmental disaster (like the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs), and we wouldn’t be here today. Unlike chimps, who are our closest relatives, all human DNA is almost identical. We split off the family tree 5 or 6 million years ago, which is plenty of time for lots of genetic differences to turn up. The fact that we’re all so alike means that in the recent past, there weren’t many of us around. Everyone on Earth today came from that tiny, struggling population.

But once we got on our feet again, we traveled extensively.

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In Tamil Nadu, on India’s East Coast, geneticists Spencer Wells and R.M. Pitchappan have found strains of genes that were present in early man when he first left Africa 60,000 years ago. When these first humans came to that part of India, some of them decided to stay and their progeny are still there today. “These gene pools are unique and very accurately map the path a population has taken, leaving behind original communities to grow into independent groups but with a common ancestor,” says Pitchappan.
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New radiocarbon testing on 27 skulls that were found in Mexico 100 years ago shows some of them are almost 13,000 years old, the oldest found so far in the Americas. Domestic tools 14,500 years old have been discovered in Chile, but no human remains were found with them. The two oldest skulls are long and narrow, while more recent skulls are short and broad, like those of American Indians. This suggests that a race of narrow-headed humans were living in the Americas before the arrival of the ancestors of present-day Native Americans. Before this, archeologists thought Indians were the first people to arrive on the continent, by way of a temporary land bridge from Asia.
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A giant, prehistoric-looking bird has been sighted in Southwest Alaska. Pilot John Bouker says the bird?s wingspan is as big as the wing on his Cessna 207, which is 14 feet. He’d heard rumors about the bird, but says, “I didn’t put any thought into it.” That was before he looked out of the left window of his plane and saw it about 1,000 feet away. “The people in the plane all saw him,” he says. “He’s huge, he’s huge, he’s really, really big. You wouldn’t want to have your children out.”
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