Posted on 04/06/2005 12:13:36 PM PDT by CobaltBlue
The toothless skull of an early human ancestor, discovered in the Republic of Georgia, may attest to evolution's oldest known example of some kind of compassion for the elderly and handicapped in society, scientists are reporting today.
Other experts agreed that the discovery was significant, but cautioned that it might be a stretch to interpret the fossil as evidence of compassion.
The well-preserved skull belonged to a male Homo erectus about 40 years old. All his teeth, except the left canine, were missing. The empty tooth sockets had been filled in by a regrowth of bone, the scientists said, indicating that the man had been toothless for at least two years before he died at what was then an old age. (The discoverers call him the "old man.")
In a report in today's issue of the journal Nature, the discovery team said the 1.77-million-year-old skull "raises questions about alternative subsistence strategies in early Homo."
Specifically, how could the man have survived that long, unable to chew the food of a mainly meat-eating society?
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
For a toothless diet: eggs, brains, blood, marrow, tubers or intestines hammered to mush.
So you were proposing that they gave him a beer bong?
On second thought, beer is almost liquid bread so perhaps that would make sense
When the prehistoric man drove up from the dregs,
He didn't know what would go with the bacon and the eggs.
Must of been some Einstein that got it in his head
To plug the toaster in the wall, and go buy a bag of bread
And make TOAST! YEAH, TOAST!
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