Becoming Human

Two months ago scientists announced that heat treatment -  controlled baking of stone in order to improve it as a raw material for shaping into tools - had far earlier origins than had been thought previously.  See the article "Heat Treatment Makes Better Stone Tools", below.  We now have video discussing heat treatment, or fire hardening.

The announcement from China of the discovery of tantalisingly few fossils raise the possibility Homo sapiens arrived in eastern Asia far earlier than first supposed.  These finds also revive the controversy surrounding two contending hypotheses of human evolution, the multi regional versus  African origin.