tIME ABOUt A million and a ten genius of ted took one stone and carefully used itto s eardrop-s it  piece of advanced technology.

    It o existing tools t soon otor’s lead andmaking ually ed t seemed to do littleelse. “tattersall. “terally can’t move  stepping on t’s strange because te intensive objects to make. It .”

    From a sattersall took do, perand a  inc its  point, and  to me. It epping-stone. As a fiberglass cast it anzania, y-five pounds. “Itely useless as a tool,” tattersall said. “It o lift itadequately, and even t o try to pound anyt.”

    “  used for then?”

    tattersall gave a genial s tery of it. “No idea. It must ance, but we can only guess w.”

    tools, after St. Ac examples eentury, and contrastools kno Olduvai Gorge intanzania. In older textbooks, Oldoools are usually s, rounded, ones. In fact, paleoants noend to believe t tool part of Oldoones, wting.

    Noarted to move out of Africa sometools ecools, too. t distances. Sometimes took unso make into tools later on. ted to technology.

    But altools  Africa, Europe, and ern andcentral Asia, t never been found in t. this is deeply puzzling.

    In tologist named ools from t. terly direction across Europe and t to ty of modern-dayCalcutta and Banglades Asia andinto Cools   far beyond t, so oneteco t and t abandon it?

    “t troubled me for a long time,” recalls Alan tralian NationalUniversity in Canberra. “t round t of Africa in t . Yet to accept t you must believe t so far ecever reason, gave it up. It o say t.”

    As it turned out, t deal else to be puzzled about, and one of tpuzzling findings of all  of tback ofAustralia. In 1968, a geologist named Jim Boed caugicking out of a crescent-sype knote ime, it  ralia for no more t Mungo was anyone doing in sucable place?

    ting,  tat, a dozen miles long, full of er and fis groves of casuarina trees. to everyone’s astonis, turnedout to be 23,000 years old. Oted to as much as 60,000 years.

    ted to t of seeming practically impossible. At no time since arose on Eartralia not been an island. Any  o start a breeding population, aftercrossing sixty miles or more of open er   aconvenient landfall aed tralia’s nort—t ofentry—o a report in tional Academy ofSciences, “t people may  arrived substantially earlier than 60,000 years ago.”

    tions t can’t be ansomost antexts, t people could even speak 60,000 years ago,mucs of cooperative efforts necessary to build ocean- andcolonize island continents.

    “t a  kno ts of people before recordedory,” Alan told me ury ants first got to Papua Neerior, in some of t inaccessible terrain on eartpotatoes. S potatoes are native to Sout to Papua Ne kno est idea. But ain is t people raditionally t, andalmost certainly sion.”

    ts of to term preservation of e goatee and an intent but friendly manner. “If it  for a feiveareas like  Africa le. And le. t oneancient  300,000 years ago. Betnam—t’s adistance of some 5,000 kilometers—t tal in Uzbekistan.” ’s not a o  ion t you’ve got a feive areas for Rift Valley in Africa and Mungo ralia, and very little in bet’s notsurprising t paleontologists rouble connecting ts.”

    traditional to explain s—and till accepted by ty of people in t  ed of us,  as soon astime, as ttledin different regions, ts furto distinctive types—into Java Manand Peking Man in Asia, and halensis inEurope.

    ter, liture—tors of every one of us alive today—arose on tingouto t predecessors. Quite ter of disputation. No signs of slaug autiesbelieve tcompeted tors may alsoributed. “Pers tattersall. “telling. tainty is t we are .”

    t modern  ourselves,curiously enoug almost any ot is odd indeed, as tattersallnotes, “t t recent major event in ion—t obscure of all.” Nobody can even quite agree  at about120,000 years ago in t t not everyone accepts t tattersall and Sczmaintain t “ our species still as definitiveclarification.”

    t undisputed appearance of ern Mediterranean, aroundmodern-day Israel,  even trinkaus and S-to-classify and poorlyknoals ablisype of tool kitknoerian, o borrow.

    No Neandertal remains  tool kits turn up allover t aken te. It is also kno Neandertals and modern ed in some fasens of t. “e don’t knoime-sually lived side by side,” tattersall says, but tinued o use Neandertal tools—y. No lesscuriously, Acools are found in t scarcely exist in Europe until just 300,000 years ago. Again, ake tools ery.

    For a long time, it  tals before tinent,eventually forcing to its ern margins,  tofall in tinct. In fact, it is no Cro-Magnons  ofEurope at about time t. “Europe tyempty place in tattersall says. “t ered eac often, even y of t it came at a time knoo paleoclimatology as tellier interval, o yet another long spell of punishing cold.

    ever it  dreo Europe, it  ther.

    In any case, t Neandertals crumpled in tition from nerains against t least a little. Neandertals  tougens of tions t no modern side a feists and explorers  of temperatures routinely fell to 50 degreesbelohern England.

    Neandertals naturally retreated from t of it, but even so t  least as bad as a modern Siberian er. to be sure—aNeandertal y  as a species tly resilient and practically indestructible. t least a , over an area stretcar to Uzbekistan,wty successful run for any species of being.

    Quite ters of disagreement anduncertainty. Rigil tietury ted antal  ooped, sessential caveman. It  t prodded scientists to reconsidertologistnamed Camille Arambourg took refuge from tairplane. As  tire burst from t, and tipped suddenly, striking er in Paris  for an X-ray of icedt ebrae ly like tooped and al.

    Eitive or Neandertal’s posture , it ter. Neandertal vertebrae  simian at all. It cterly als—but only some of time, it appears.

    It is still commonly  Neandertals lacked telligence or fiber to compete onequal terms inent’s slender and more cerebrally nimble ne from a recent book: “Modern ralized tage [tal’s considerably ier pter clotter firesand better ser; meanuck  requiredmore food to sustain.” In otors t o survivesuccessfully for a housand years suddenly became an insuperable handicap.

    Above all t is almost never addressed is t Neandertals  ly larger ters for Neandertals versus 1.4 formodern people, according to one calculation. t for alt. I believe I speak trut nowion is suc made.

    So out and adaptable andcerebrally  muced)ans pers of an alternativetiregional  ion inuous—t just as australopito ime  us is, on t a separate speciesbut just a transitional p usforebears in C European us, and so on.

    “Except t for me tus,” says t’s a term s usefulness. For me, us is simply an earlier part of us. I believe onlyone species of  Africa, and t species ishomo sapiens.”

    Opponents of tiregional t it, in t instance, on t itrequires an improbable amount of parallel evolution by  t distant islands of Indonesia, iregionalism encourages a racist vie antook a very longtime to rid itself of. In t named Carleton Coon of ty of Pennsylvania suggested t some modern races  sources oforigin, implying t some of us come from more superior stock tably to earlier beliefs t some modern races suche African “Bushmen”

    (properly tralian Aborigines ive thers.

    ever Coon may personally , tion for many people  someraces are inly more advanced, and t some ially constitutedifferent species. tinctively offensive noable places until fairly recent times. I ime-Life Publications in 1961 called ticles in Lifemagazine. In it you can find sucs as “Rly as25,000 years ago and may or of to t of ly descended fromcreatures t o homo sapiens.

    tically (and I believe sincerely) dismisses t  and accounts for ty of ion by suggesting t t of movement back and fortures and regions. “tosuppose t people only  in one direction,”  t certainly sic material terbreeding. Ne replace tions, tuation to e peoples for t time. “t meetings of different species, but of th some physical differences.”

    you actually see in ts, is a smootinuoustransition. “tralona in Greece, dating from about 300,000 yearsago, t ter of contention among traditionalists because it seems in some  in ot  t  to find in species t han being displaced.”

    One t ters erbreeding, but t isnot at all easy to prove, or disprove, from fossils. In 1999, arcs in Portugal found ton of a c four years old t died 24,500 years ago. ton  ain arcal, ceristics: unusually sturdy legbones, teetinctive “stern, and (t everyone agrees on it)an indentation at ture exclusive toNeandertals. Erik trinkaus of ason University in St. Louis, ty onNeandertals, announced to be a  modern alsinterbred. Otroubled t tal and modern features more blended. As one critic put it: “If you look at a mule, you don’t  endlooking like a donkey and the back end looking like a horse.”

    Ian tattersall declared it to be nots ttals and moderns, butdoesn’t believe it could ed in reproductively successful offspring.

    1“I don’t kno are t different and still in the samespecies,” he says.

    itists urned increasingly to genetic studies,in particular t knoococ by t ty of California at Berkeley  it ures t lend it a particular convenience as a kind of molecularclock: it is passed on only t doesn’t become scrambled ernal DNA ion, and it mutates about ty times faster t easier to detect and folloic patterns over time. By tracking tes of mutation t tic ory and relationships of whole groups ofpeople.

    In 1987, team, led by te Allan ilson, did an analysis of mitoc tomically modern  140,000 years and t “all present-day  population.” It o tiregionalists. But to look a little more closely at ta. One of t extraordinary points—almost too extraordinary to credit really— tudy ually African-Americans, o considerablemediation in t fe tesof mutations.

    By 1992, tudy ed. But tecic analysiscontinued to be refined, and in 1997 scientists from ty of Municoextract and analyze some DNA from tal man, and time tood up. tudy found t tal DNA rongly indicating t tic connection betals and modern o multiregionalism.

    1One possibility is t Neandertals and Cro-Magnons  numbers of ciont commonly arises  not quite identical conjoin. In te t an offspring ively useless number of c, a sterile mule.

    te 2000 Nature and otions reported on a Socy-ted t all modern  100,000 years and came from a breeding stock of no more teror of teitute/Massacts Institute of tecer for Genome Researcmodern Europeans, and per tly as 25,000 years ago.”

    As legenetic variability—“ty in one social group of fifty-five cire ion,” as one auty  it—and this would explain why.

    Because ly descended from a small founding population, t been timeenougo provide a source of great variability. It seemed a pretty severebloo multiregionalism. “After tate academic told ton Post,“people  be too concerned about tiregional ttleevidence.”

    But all of te capacity for surprise offered by t Mungo people of ern Ne tralian National University reported t t ofted at 62,000 years—and t to be“genetically distinct.”

    to tomically modern—just like you andme—but carried an extinct genetic lineage. oc s Africa in t past.

    “It turned everyt.

    to turn up. Rosalind iongeneticist at titute of Biological Antudying betaglobingenes in modern people, found ts t are common among Asians and tralia, but  in Africa. t genes, sain,arose more t in Africa, but in east Asia—long before modern o account for to say t ancestors ofpeople noingly,t gene—to speak—turns up in modern populations inOxfordshire.

    Confused, I  to see  titute, on spent udent days. ralian, from Brisbane originally,  at time.

    “Don’t kno s be t on moresomberly, “tic record supports t-of-Africa  ters, icists prefer not to talk about. ts ofinformation t o us if only and it, but  yet.

    e’ve barely begun.” So be dra on ence of Asian-origingenes in Oxfordsells us ot tuation is clearly complicated. “All  tage is t it is very untidy and  really know why.”

    At time of our meeting, in early 2002, anotist named Bryan Sykes  produced a popular book called ters of Eve in oco be able to trace nearly all living Europeans back to afounding population of just seven ers of Eve of title—ime knoo science as to eacailed personal ory. (“Ursula  carefully, as if not quitecertain  give  foro popularize a difficult subject,” sfully. “And te possibility t .” S on more intently:

    “Data from any single gene cannot really tell you anytive. If you follooc ake you to a certain place—to an Ursula or tara or if you take any ot of DNA, any gene at all, and traceit back, it akeyou someplace else altogether.”

    It tle, I gat of London and finding teventually it ends at Jos, and concluding from t anyone in London musttland. t  equally to  omap tes. “No single gene is ever going to tell you tory,” she said.

    So genetic studies aren’t to be trusted?

    “Orust tudies  trust are t people often attaco them.”

    S-of-Africa is “probably 95 percent correct,” but adds: “I t of a disservice to science by insisting t it must be one to turn out to be not so straigarting to suggest t tiple migrations and dispersals indifferent parts of tions and generally mixing up t’s never going to be easy to sort out.”

    Just at time, ts questioning ty of claimsconcerning t DNA. An academic ing in Nature ed ologist, asked by a colleague op and announced t it ed ture article, “largeamounts of modern ransferred to tuseless for future study. I asked  t  certainly aminated already,” s aminate it. Breataminate it. Most of ter in our labs aminate it. e are all so get a reliably clean specimen you o excavate it in sterileconditions and do tests on it at te. It is trickiest t tocontaminate a specimen.”

    So sreated dubiously? I asked.

    harding nodded solemnly. “Very,” she said.

    If you and at once   is to be found a little beyond to t of Nairobi. Drive out of ty on toUganda, and t of startling glory h a hang glider’s view of boundless, pale green African plain.

    t Rift Valley, ectonic rupture t is setting Africa adrift from Asia. y milesout of Nairobi, along t site called Olorgesailie,  lake. In 1919, long after tnamed J. . Gregory ing ts ctered ones t  sites of Acool manufacture t Iantattersall old me about.

    Unexpectedly in tumn of 2002 I found myself a visitor to traordinary site. Iogeting some projects run by ty CAREInternational, but my s, knoerest in  volume, ed a visit to Olorgesailie into the schedule.

    After its discovery by Gregory, Olorgesailie lay undisturbed for over team of Louis and Mary Leakey began an excavation t isn’tcompleted yet.  te stretco ten acres or so, o 200,000 years ago. today tool beds are sered from t of tsbeneatin lean-tos and fenced off o discourage opportunisticscavenging by visitors, but otools are left just hem.

    Jillani Ngalli, a keen young man from tional Museum  as guide, told me t tz and obsidian rocks from ones from t a pair of mountains in tance, in opposite directions fromte: Olorgesailie and Ol Esakut. Eac ten kilometers, or six miles, ao carry an armload of stone.

    to sucrouble only did ty stones considerable distances to t, pere. tions revealed t t axes were brougo be resharpened.

    Olorgesailie ory; one t stayed in business for a million years.

    Various replications  tricky and labor-intensive objects tomake—even ice, an axe ake o fas, curiously, t particularly good for cutting or casks to  ion t for a million years—far, farlonger tence, mucinuouscooperative efforts—early people came in considerable numbers to ticular site to makeextravagantly large numbers of tools t appear to less.

    And us because tes,  t. But to base a conclusion. Despite over sixty years of searcy of Olorgesailie. ime t t appears t elsewo die.

    “It’s all a mystery,” Jillani Ngalli told me, beaming happily.

    t 200,000 years ago arted to become t and c is today. Butby time t to get itsfirst real master race, he same again.