Pushing back origins

[Bikewer]

The dates for the appearance of the first "modern" humans has varied somewhat over the years, with most authorities holding out for somewhere in the vicinity of 50,00 years ago.
Recent finds seem to push that back closer to the 100,000 year mark.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060623/ap_on_sc/oldest_jewelry_2

Decorative shell beads, imported from seacoast regions far from the site of discovery, indicate behaviors we associate with modern humans. The researchers speculate that such behaviors accumulated gradually.

[athon]

Yeah, well, that's the tricky part. What collection of behaviours mark us 'human'?

Culture is something many intelligent animals seem to have, be it dolphins adopting the behaviour of using a sponge on their nose to search for food, chimps fishing for termites or orangutans sharing the skill of how to sort rice from dirt. At what point can you call such things as 'human'?

It makes for interesting speculation, though, however I don't think the date will ever settle.

(BTW, I really hope there's a zero missing from your '50,000'... otherwise there's some ancient cultures who will be mighty annoyed at being removed from modern humanity)

Athon

[Soapy Sam]

50,000 years seems to be a round number estimate for the big cultural explosion which archaeologists thought they perceived. It doesn't mark any emergence of biologically modern humans.
I think it has long been suspected that this date is an artifact of two things.
1.All palaeoarcheologists can work with are surviving artifacts.
2.Most work has been done in Europe.

It's probable that the apparent " cultural explosion" is really the end result of a slow accretion of technologies over an uncertain but far longer period, outside Europe.

Like the " Cambrian Explosion" in palaeontology, when you get closer to the detail , the "cultural explosion" starts to look more like a series of slow burning fires that spread into an area of virgin forest with noticeable results.

[The Don]

In South Africa they refer to modern humans around 200,000 years ago

[Soapy Sam]

Yes. "modern" in the biological rather than cultural sense.