Ron gets an ancient and mysterious no-prize for bringing us this new development in paleoanthropological research. Scientists studying a cave in Mount Carmel, Israel, have found evidence of sophisticated human behaviors which has been dated to approximately 200,000 years ago.

This is an extremely early date for such behaviors, so the findings would appear to be more ammunition for those who argue modern human behavior emerged with modern human anatomy. Until quite recently, it was thought that while modern anatomy evolved about 200,000 years ago, findings seemed to indicate modern behavior only arose about 35,000 years ago, with no good explanation for the gap. It's beginning to appear that, in this case at least, absence of evidence really wasn't evidence of absence.