Detailing The History Of Our Species

I love articles like this one in which a discovery is described which may ultimately mean that another early branch of our family tree has been revealed by Science. I know that probably won't quicken the pulse of many visitors to this blog, but it sort of does mine. Or rather, it feeds deliciously into my growing belief that we're day-by-day uncovering the history of this amazing planet of ours. That's something that, for the first 99% of the time that we've been around as a species, has been almost exclusively the province of superstition (which is to say, imagination), rather than fact. The tools that we've got at our disposal now, such as DNA sequencing, have blown the lid off of questions like, "Where did we come from?" and "Who are we?"

I think of the millions of years of darkness that preceded our current situation and the fact that we're now so capable of shining light on all of those mysteries, and I get quite a thrill.