Friday, June 23, 2006

Kidders in science

Up until recently, examples of modern behaviour before 50,000 years ago had eluded researchers, even though humans with modern-looking anatomy are known in the fossil record from about 195,000 years ago onward.

This had led some researchers to propose that modern anatomy and modern behaviour did not evolve in tandem.

Instead, they argued, a fortuitous mutation in the human brain may have triggered an explosion in human creativity 50,000 years ago, leading to a sudden appearance of personal ornaments, skilfully-crafted art, novel tools and weapons.

Really? People argued this? This has got to be a kind of a 'WMD' approach to science, wherein crafty ne'er-do-wells write crazy stuff down just because it can't be easily disproven.

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