Human Future: What Will our Stamp in Time be?

In 1924, the skull of a 3-year-old boy found in South Africa forever changed the way people thought about human origins. The so-called Taung Child, our first encounter with an ancient group of protohumans called Australopithecines, was a turning point in the study of our evolution. This discovery shifted the focus of studying human origins from Europe and Asia to Africa and set the stage for the last century of research on the continent and in its "cradles of humanity."

Few would have predi...