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Ancestors who came in from the cold.


The Russian Arctic's bitter cold and flat expanses present a formidable challenge to survival. Yet either Homo sapiens Homo sapiens

(Latin; “wise man”)

Species to which all modern human beings belong. The oldest known fossil remains date to c. 120,000 years ago—or much earlier (c.
 or Neandertals were living there by around 36,000 years ago, according to according to
prep.
1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.

2. In keeping with: according to instructions.

3.
 a report in the Sept. 6 NATURE.

Until now, excavations had revealed a human presence in the far reaches of northern Asia only as early as 14,000 to 12,000 years ago (SN: 7/7/01, p. 7).

A Russian and Norwegian team, led by Pavel Pavlov of the Russian Academy of Sciences Russian Academy of Sciences (Russian: Росси́йская Акаде́мия Нау́к,  in Syktyvkar, unearthed Unearthed is the name of a Triple J project to find and "dig up" (hence the name) hidden talent in regional Australia.

Unearthed has had three incarnations - they first visited each region of Australia where Triple J had a transmitter - 41 regions in all.
 the remains of an ancient human occupation in riverbed deposits at a Russian Arctic site. Finds include several stone tools, the bones of mammoths and other animals that had apparently been butchered, and a 4-foot-long mammoth tusk bearing signs of being chopped with a sharpened stone. It's unclear why someone made these grooves on the tusk.

Radiocarbon ra·di·o·car·bon  
n.
A radioactive isotope of carbon, especially carbon 14.


radiocarbon
Noun

a radioactive isotope of carbon, esp.
 analyses of the marked tusk and three animal bones provided an age estimate for the occupation site.

The new find "implies that either the Neandertals expanded much further north than previously thought or that modern humans were present in the Arctic only a few thousand years after their first appearance in Europe," the scientists say.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Science Service, Inc.
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 2001, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

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Article Details
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Title Annotation:prehistoric peoples in the Arctic
Author:B.B.
Publication:Science News
Article Type:Brief Article
Geographic Code:0ARCT
Date:Sep 22, 2001
Words:200
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