Humans first appeared
on the planet around 100,000 years ago. At that time, several different human
races lived side by side including Neanderthal man (named from where the first
skeleton was found in 1856 in the Neander valley in Germany). Neanderthal people
died out about 40,000 years ago. No-one knows why... but the first definite modern
humans - eleven skeletons found in a cave near Nazareth in Israel - were living
just 26,000 years ago [1]. That may seem a long time to you
but to a humble little shell (called Lingula) whose descendants have lived
quietly and virtually unchanged since the Cambrian Era over 500 million years
ago, it must seem like a... like a... well, a very short time indeed! Even to
us penguins - and we've only been around for about 25 million years - you people
are real upstarts, taking over the whole planet like you have in just a couple
of centuries.