The First European

[GeneW]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01396/The_first_modern_1396404f.jpg

I've met several people who look a lot like this person. One coworker whose parents came from Eastern Europe (especially after he gets heavily tanned in the summer) and another who came from West Africa (the Gold Coast).

I especially like the little smile, which I see on these two people at work when I greet them in the morning, or when I help them with a problem or they stump me with one of their own. That same spirit of competition and cooperation which took us across the world and let us live practically anywhere.

I'm sure we've changed in some ways, maybe some skills are sharper, others less acute, but we're not too terribly different. I can only imagine what such a person would think if they met their descendants... how amazed they'd be and yet how familiar we'd seem to them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/romania/5273654/Scientists-reveal-face-of-the-first-European.html

Gene

[GeneW]

Sometimes at work I can see the same spirit that drove these folks. When we team up to tackle problems I can almost see the "shadows" of ancient times, when people cooperated and bickered to solve problems that were not really that much different....

One would think that discovering a solution to an equation or finding an answer to a ticklish software problem is light years from tracking game or finding food, but I don't think so. I can "feel" the same processes at work when I'm out in the woods as I do when I'm at the desk with pencil and paper. Maybe I'm a romantic, only time will tell.

Gene