Ancient shellfish suggest modern humans evolved 50000 years ago – Los Angeles Times

The quote that struck me the most is: "Whether these things are art or jewelry really is in the eye of the beholder."

Now this could be said by the average visitor of an exhibition of (post)modern art 😉 Which actually raises deeper questions: How to define culture? How to decide what is and what is not an expression of culture, loaded with symbolic meaning? (See what I did there: brought in a piece of my own definition – which calls for further definitions, I know…) How to decide what is art and what is junk, independent of the ‘eye of he beholder’? Can we bridge the gap between ourselves and our ancestors/ancestral species?

Basically it’s the same old question popping up again: "What does it mean to be human?" That’s what exites me about scientific research like this: it offers us a glimpse of (what could be) an early stage in the long, on-going process of human becoming (borrowed that expression from Philip Hefner)…