NOW we know how we should picture the first modern humans: dining on hippo and catfish on the shores of an African lake.
The discovery of three remarkable human skulls, modern in appearance but for a dash of ape in the brow and jaw, seems to settle one of the longest-running and most acrimonious debates in palaeontology (“The dawn of Homo sapiens”). For years, most experts have argued that our species evolved just once, in Africa, and swept across the globe, ousting more primitive relatives such as the Neanderthals as it went. But a vociferous minority have insisted that…
