Scientists Find Homo Erectus Skull In Georgia (The Former Soviet Republic - Not The State). Softball Playoffs Begin. Happy Birthday Yaz.

Homo Erectus Skull Found In Former Soviet Republic

The following story, from the Yahoo News science section, shows that early man's presence in Europe was more extensive than has been previously thought to have been the case. Excerpt:

TBILISI, Georgia - Archaeologists in the former Soviet republic of Georgia have unearthed a skull they say is 1.8 million years old and part of a find that holds that oldest traces of humankind's closest ancestors ever found in Europe.

The findings in Georgia, which researchers said were a million years older than any widely accepted pre-human remains in Europe, have provided additional evidence that Homo erectus left Africa a half-million years or more earlier than scientists had previously thought.

Million-year-old fossils of hominids — extinct creatures of the extended ancestral family of modern humans — have been found in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, but not in Western Europe. Georgia is south of the Caucasus Mountains and northeast of Turkey, but is considered part of Europe.

Full Story

This is big folks. As previously noted, this means that early man was thriving in an area of the world that was not supposed to have been heavily settled for hundreds of thousands of years after the date of this find. I just wonder what the Intelligent Design crowd is going to make of this discovery.


Softball Playoffs Begin

My wage-slavery facility softball league begins its playoffs tomorrow night, and my team is scheduled to play in the first of two games to be played. We finished the regular season with ten wins against six losses, which was good for a seventh place finish (out of 18 teams). The playoffs are divided into two divisions, first place through tenth place and eleventh place through 18th place. We get the tenth place team in game one. These guys beat us by one run (one of three one-run losses we suffered) as we didn't hit the way we can. It's a single-elimination format, so it's all or nothing beginning tomorrow night. This notice is to inform my eight loyal readers why there may not be a post tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Yaz

Also, Happy 66th Birthday to Red Sox Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski. Yaz was the American League Most Valuable Player in 1967, the Impossible Dream club that came from a 9th place finish in 1966 to win the AL pennant and take the St. Louis Cardinals to seven games in the 1967 World Series before eventually succumbing to Cadrinals ace Bob Gibson's dominance. Yaz is also the last big leaguer to win his league's Triple Crown, which came in his MVP season of 1967 when he had a .326 batting average, 44 home runs (tied with Harmon Killebrew of the Twins) and 121 runs batted in. Yaz also led the AL in runs scored with 112, hits with 189, total bases with 360 and slugging percentage with a .622 mark. He also won a Gold Glove for his stellar defense in left field. Yaz was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989. He holds Red Sox career records in hits (3,419), doubles (646), total bases (5,539), runs batted in (1,844) and runs scored (1,816).