BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Oldest human skulls found

Paleoanthropologists have uncovered two homo sapiens skulls in Ethiopia that date back 160,000 years. Though there are some minor differences -- enough for them to classify the skulls as a new subspecies, homo sapiens idaltu -- it gives strong support for the emergence of homo sapiens out of Africa.

What's really exciting about this article, however, is that the skulls give evidence of ritual mortuary practices. This makes human culture much, much older. To give you a reference: the Venus of Willendorf, one of the earliest pieces of sculpted art, is about 24,000 years old. The cave paintings in Chauvet, widely regarded as some of the earliest, date back around 31,000 years. The Neanderthals were still a strong subspecies of human, wandering around Northern Europe.

To have human culture back that far is quite astounding.