Scientists can’t decide if shoulders of giants were broader or just better organized
By Matt Crenson
The people who lived in Tasmania 8,000 years ago were pretty sophisticated, technologically speaking. They made bone tools, boomerangs, nets for catching a variety of prey and warm clothing to protect themselves from blustery weather. But when Europeans came upon that island, off Australia’s southern coast, just a few centuries ago, they found some of the most primitive hunter-gatherers in the world — subsisting without seaworthy vessels, sewn clothing or bone tools of any kind.
What happened to the Tasmanians over the intervening millennia is a favorite mystery of anthropologists, because it looks like human history in reverse: Over the course of a few thousand generations, Homo sapiens developed tools, skills and social structures that have enabled the species to go from scratching out a living in isolated African populations to dominating the global ecosystem. How on Earth did we do it?