Just before Halloween 1938, Orson Welles the American filmmaker, who was to produce and act in the film Citizen Kane (1940), broadcast a radio version of War of the Worlds, the science fiction masterpiece written by H. G. Wells in 1898. This radio drama involved Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater players, and it purported to report an actual invasion of Martian spacecraft landing at Grovers Mills, New Jersey, a small town near Princeton. The broadcast proved to be extremely realistic, convincing and alarming for it fooled thousands of listeners into believing that the Earth was actually being attacked by warships from outer space. Indeed, many local residents picked up their rifles and took to Grovers Mills farmlands, ready to defend their homes against the invaders.
“How old is the oldest human fossil?,” If you had said about 700,000 years, you would probably have been right until just recently that is, “The September 1998 issue of Discover magazine”, reports that Ernesto Abbate, a geology professor from Florence, Italy, has just discovered the fossilized skull and teeth of a humanlike creature who might have lived, as far back as, one million years ago. Calling this creature Buia Man after the city in northeastern Africa where the remains were found. Prof. Abbate thinks he has discovered the earliest fossil that displays physical features associated with Homo sapiens, the species to which modern humans belong. Moreover, Buia Man says, Prof. Abbate also shows physical
The infamous event of the Piltdown hoax is one that continues to draw speculative attention over a century after the initial announcement of the paleoanthropological findings. Although many scientists, especially those involved in the field of paleoanthropology, would like to forget the incident entirely, the Piltdown man—taxonomically referred to as Eoanthropus dawsoni—is perhaps the greatest hoax in anthropological history. By 1912, British archaeologists and paleontologists were desperate for a significant paleoanthropological finding that would provide the missing link between humans and apes in hominin evolution (Prosser, 2009). The Piltdown man was originally a famous finding that straddled the human-animal boundary, dichotomously
Homo floresiensis (“Man of Flores”) is the name for a possible new species in the genus Homo, remarkable for its small body, small brain, and survival until relatively recent times (www.en.wikipedia.org). Anthropologists Peter Brown of University of New England in South Wales, Australia, Michael Morwood and their colleagues have argued that a variety of features, both primitive and derived, identified LB1 (the first skeleton found in cave of Liang Bua) is that of a new species of hominin, Homo floresiensis. The first specimens were discovered by Thomas Sutikna and colleagues from the Indonesian Research Centre for Archaeology in Liang Bua cave of Flores, Indonesia in September of 2003
timeline of modern humans, Homo sapiens, and how long they have been in existence. According to mainstream science, popular belief holds that the history of our species is confirmed to be confined to the past 12,000 years. This figure is a culmination based on what we know about evolution and what we have been able to gather through fossil analyzation and dating of artifacts as well as human remains. Although the subject of human antiquity, also referred to as human origins, does not prompt a great deal of debate there may actually be the need for some. A reexamination of the notion that humans have only existed a mere 12,000 years should be considered as there may be evidence to support a much greater antiquity of modern human life. Alternative researchers have offered up evidence of “forbidden archeology” that contradicts the mainstream beliefs of human origins, however these discoveries seem to have been swept under the scientific rug.
A frightened Halloween evening, a country over 23 million people, and a man with intelligent skills, had all reappeared as a terrifying scene which would never erase from every American’s memory. Orson Welles, a radio broadcast director of the Mercury Theatre, “successfully” used a vivid technique, and narrated the adaptation of H.G Wells’ science fiction the War of the Worlds on a special time period of October 30, 1938. Its’ realism created a horrified panic in the audience and even the whole nation. This thesis is supported by the following reasons.
“The War of the Worlds” is a well-known science fiction novel by H.G. Wells that was published in 1898. This novel is known for its However, one of the most prolific events related to the novel occurred in 1938 when a dramatic radio drama version of the story was broadcasted as a Halloween special. In 1938, radio was one of the most heavily used mediums for people to receive news. This broadcasting was reported to have been misinterpreted by listeners who believed it to be a real event, causing mass panic. This was heavily publicized, however, in recent years, new historical research has suggested that the panic may not have been as widespread as suggested.
Orson Welles’ career took place in the mid-thirties to late eighties in the twentieth century. He began his career at age fifteen, starting in Ireland, making his acting debut in the Gate Theater in Dublin. By eighteen, Welles started to appear in off-Broadway productions. It was then that he also launched his radio career. By age twenty, he had presented alternate interpretations of certain well-known plays and movies. At age twenty-two he was the most notable Broadway star from Mercury Theater and, because of this, BBC radio gave him an hour each week to broadcast whatever he pleased. That’s when, at age twenty-five, he broadcast War of the Worlds, which caused panic due to the “Martian invasions”. By the time he came into
”. Based on this article the prehistoric humans that they claimed lived in the area of California 130,000 years ago might have been a species that they were familiar with, but its not for sure. This information was from a journal that came from an uncovering of Mastodon bones near San Diego. According to the article the earliest piece of evidence that people existed in America was less than 15,000 years old. Based on the information provided the author thought that if humans existed so many years ago then they might not be similar to any living people. This and other information leads the author to believe that the discover of these unknown settlers might be a part of an extinct group. Demere a paleontologist said that the information found from the discovery of these mastodon bones has brought out many questions as to who these unknown people were, who supposedly lived 130,000 years ago.
In 1938, Welles shockingly impressed the radio audience, one night before the Halloween with his exaggerated H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds. Although, the performance garnered a lot of backlash, it was not deterred Steven Spielberg from producing the remake of The War of the Worlds in the early year 2000s.
According to physical evidence, and theories, scholars have concluded upon a whole hypothesis. Based on their knowledge and belief, modern humans diverged from Homo sapiens between 200,000 and 150,000 years ago specifically in Africa, that between 125,000 and 60,000 years ago members of Homo sapiens left Africa, and that these
A group of these challengers, led by Jack Harris of Rutgers University, have found evidence of tools and skeletons of Homo erectus consistently located in the same campsites as burned patches in Koobi Fora, Kenya, all dated back approximately 1.6 million years ago, (McCrone, 30). Harris insists that, "even discounting
Crossing over the distance of two continents, the next fossil was recovered from a gravel pit in Swanscombe, England, and is believed to date from 250,000 years ago. The Swanscombe skull consists of an occipital bone and left and right parietals, all well-preserved (1987: 223-224). The cranial volume has been estimated at 1,275 to 1,325 cc., putting it well within the range of modern populations. There are some archaic features, however, as well. There is some indication of a heavy brow ridge, and the cranial walls are relatively thick (1987: 224). Also, the vault of the skull is low, further suggesting some sort of transitional between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens (1987: 224-225). Again, this mixture of modern and archaic features is very conveniently explained by the multi-regional continuity theory of human evolution.
As one of the founding members in the field of paleogenetics, Pääbo has revolutionised evolutionary science immensely, opening up a wholenother aspect from which we can investigate our own and our planets past. Through development of new techniques he has uncovered secrets hidden deep in the bones of those that inhabited the earth thousands of years ago.
Our world as we know it, is full of missing puzzle pieces when it comes to completing the picture of how human kind truly came to be. For years and years talented fieldworkers have been working all over the world to try and collect all of these missing pieces. Slowly over the years an increasing amount of body and fossil records are helping us better understand when, where and how hominins came into and left existence. There have been many discoveries between the Australopithecus Afensis and more recent discoveries with very human like features like the Homo Erectus. The discovery of the Australopithecus Sediba is seen as a bench mark halfway point in our evolutionary time line their fossil discovery gives us insight on how they would have lived, what they could have looked like and how they are presumably related to humans.
Human evolution is the gradual process in which people, or Homo sapiens, originated from apelike ancestors. Scientific evidence, particularly in the form of fossils and secondary remains, show that the physical and behavioral traits shared by all people evolved over a period of approximately six million years. Humans are primates. Both genetic and physical similarities show that humans and the great apes (large apes) of Africa, chimpanzees (including bonobos, or so-called “pygmy chimpanzees”) and gorillas share a common ancestor that lived between 8 and 6 million years ago. The volume of fossils found in Africa suggests that most evolution occurred there and is likely the place of origin for early humans. This brings to fruition the “out of Africa” theory, also called the “single-origin hypothesis.”
The first fossil was found in 1960 when a team led by scientists Louis and Mary Leakey uncovered the fossilized remains of a unique early human at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.