Free Republic

Illustration by Michael Rothman Before An Australopithecus, sporting full-bodied fur about four million years ago. After An archaic human walked fur-free about 1.2 million years ago, carrying fire on the savanna ONE of the most distinctive evolutionary changes as humans parted company from their fellow apes was their loss of body hair. But why and when human body hair disappeared, together with the matter of when people first started to wear clothes, are questions that have long lain beyond the reach of archaeology and paleontology. Ingenious solutions to both issues have now been proposed, independently, by two research groups analyzing...

Narrow skulls clue to first Americans 11:24 04 September 03 NewScientist.com news service Skull measurements on the remains of an isolated group of people who lived at the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California has stirred up the debate on the identity of the first Americans once again. The earliest inhabitants of North America differed subtly but significantly from modern native Americans. The difference is clearly seen in the skull shapes of the first people to colonise the continent, who had longer, narrower skulls than modern people. One theory says it is because two distinct groups of people migrated to...

July 17, 2003 Laws That Limit Online ShoppersBy VIRGINIA POSTREL EMEMBER when getting a mortgage meant visiting a bank or a broker in person, when handcrafted jewelry was something you could buy only at a gallery, when finding out-of-print books meant combing used-book stores, when only New Yorkers could buy certain high-end cosmetics? Internet commerce changed all that, breaking down many local monopolies and giving people in small towns access to the product variety formerly found only in the largest metropolitan areas. Now, anyone anywhere can buy just about any book, any music CD, any electronic product, and all...