On: Scientists find 7.2M-year-old pre-human remains in the Balkans

[rosser]

They found some fossils, including jawbones and teeth, in Greece belonging to an evolutionary ancestor of homo sapiens sapiens that seem to be older than those found elsewhere.

[gatlinnewhouse → rosser]

Hmm. Isn't Mesopotamia like the "cradle of civilization," and Greece is far but not terribly far from Mesopotamia. While shocking news, maybe the first civilizations came from Mesopotamia/Mediterranean Sea area because people had been there the longest?

[restalis → gatlinnewhouse]

Judging from all the existing fossils, one can assume that the prehumans started shifting into humans somewhere around East Mediterranean, but still got to Africa first and evolved there. Somewhere much later, after some migration waves of other species of humans, came the Homo Sapiens Sapiens' turn - they left Africa and only then presumably got into that final continuous settlements around Mesopotamia.

[s_m_t → gatlinnewhouse]

Civilization happened long after humans came about

[gatlinnewhouse → s_m_t]

Good point. I didn't think through this terribly much to be honest.

[s_m_t → gatlinnewhouse]

Easy mistake to make, there is a reason they call it 'pre-history' :-)

[coldtea → gatlinnewhouse]

>Hmm. Isn't Mesopotamia like the "cradle of civilization," and Greece is far but not terribly far from Mesopotamia.

That's not really relevant, as the Mesopotamian civilizations are still millions of years after the era of the skeletons found here.

[rosser → gatlinnewhouse]

The delta between these fossils and "civilization" is almost ten million years.