a weapon that would enable them to operate safely away from trees, and to occupy dark caves where predators often lurked. It also enabled Homo erectus to settle and live in far cooler environments. It may be no coincidence that the earliest human settlement of Europe and Asia occurred after Homo Erectus could make as well as tame, fire. Somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago, Homo erectus evolved into Homo sapiens. There is no particular reason to identify why evolution happened during this period and exactly when it happened. In fact, others, depending on the scientist’s belief in what happened, classify certain fossils from this period as late Homo erectus by some scientists and as early Homo sapiens. Even though they are in the same genus and species as modern humans, these early Homo sapiens do not have identical physical traits to modern humans. New fossil evidence suggests that modern man, sometimes called Homo sapiens (a sub-species of Homo sapiens), first appeared more than 90,000 years ago. There is some disagreement among scientists on whether the hominine fossil record shows a continuous evolutionary development from the first appearance of Homo sapiens to modern humans. This disagreement has especially focused on the place of Neandertals (or Neanderthals), often classified as H. sapiens neanderthalis, in the chain of human evolution. The Neanderthals (named for the Neander Valley in Germany, where one of the earliest skulls was found) occupied parts of Europe and the Middle East from 100,000 years ago until about 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, when they disappeared from the fossil record. Fossils of additional varieties of early Homo sapiens have been discovered in other parts of the Eurasia. Snell 6The dispute over the Neanderthals also involves the question of the evolutionary origins of modern human populations, or races. Although a precise definition of the term race is not possible (because modern humans s...
