A new study of stone tools found in South Africa is pushing back the time scientists believe humans became "culturally" modern. The problem is that we seem to have reached our modern anatomy tens of thousands of years before we can find any evidence of (comparatively) advanced culture or technology. Some say this is just the result of a patchy fossil record. Others claim some other, so far mysterious, things needed to happen before we could achieve our full potential. The discovery of these "microliths" would lend credence to the "spotty record" camp.

Which, of course, will mean yet another slow-motion flame fest in the academic journals. Nobody in anthropology comes up with an original idea without a decades-long trial by fire.