Penn team uncovers skeleton of 'world's oldest child' [108K yrs old, that's a lot of candles]

Philadelphia Inquirer ^ | June 16, 2011 | Faye Flam

[SunkenCiv]

Last year, while a Penn team of archaeologists was working in Morocco, members uncovered a treasure beyond anything they'd imagined - a skeleton of a child from 108,000 years ago. They don't know what killed him at about age 8, but his remains are believed to be one of the most complete ever found of this period... One of the earliest sites where people left evidence of artwork and symbolism is in Morocco, where a team led by Penn Museum's Harold Dibble found the child... that died 108,000 years ago, as shown by various dating techniques... From analyzing the teeth, Dibble's team estimated he or she was 6 to 8 years old... a boy... The young age of the child is also of scientific interest, he said. "As far as I know, this is the first juvenile from that crucial time period." ...Anthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin... "Maybe instead of a little garden of Eden in South Africa as the source population for extant humans, the situation in Africa 100,000 years ago was more complicated, with many other groups showing evolution toward what we call behavioral and anatomical modernity," ...One thing that impresses Hublin is that the shell beads from Morocco and southern Africa are made from similar species. "It's amazing to think that at the distance of several thousand kilometers, humans had been developing behaviors that are so similar."

[SunkenCiv]

Come to think of it, this kid must be 108,008 years old.

[married21]

brilliant.

[Tainan]

wow...ya mean to say they had children way back then?......amazing.