Orson Is The Oldest Human Fossil - 928 Words

Just before Halloween 1938, Orson Welles the American filmmaker, who was to produce and act in the film Citizen Kane (1940), broadcast a radio version of War of the Worlds, the science fiction masterpiece written by H. G. Wells in 1898. This radio drama involved Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater players, and it purported to report an actual invasion of Martian spacecraft landing at Grovers Mills, New Jersey, a small town near Princeton. The broadcast proved to be extremely realistic, convincing and alarming for it fooled thousands of listeners into believing that the Earth was actually being attacked by warships from outer space. Indeed, many local residents picked up their rifles and took to Grovers Mills farmlands, ready to defend their homes against the invaders. â€Å"How old is the oldest human fossil?,† If you had said about 700,000 years, you would probably have been right until just recently that is, â€Å"The September 1998 issue of Discover magazine†, reports that Ernesto Abbate, a geology professor from Florence, Italy, has just discovered the fossilized skull and teeth of a humanlike creature who might have lived, as far back as, one million years ago. Calling this creature Buia Man after the city in northeastern Africa where the remains were found. Prof. Abbate thinks he has discovered the earliest fossil that displays physical features associated with Homo sapiens, the species to which modern humans belong. Moreover, Buia Man says, Prof. Abbate also shows physical