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Dogs were our first domesticated companions, born from Ice Age wolves before farming. A 14,000-year-old dog was nursed through illness and buried beside two humans.
Clothing rots away, so we date its origin from the DNA of body lice, which only live in clothing. The answer is surprisingly early, well before humans left Africa.
Language may be our defining trait, yet it leaves no fossils. Scientists reconstruct its origin from anatomy, the FOXP2 gene, and the first symbolic art.
Prehistoric people practiced real medicine: trepanation that patients survived, a 31,000-year-old amputation that healed, and Neanderthals who cared for their injured.
Homo floresiensis, the 'real hobbits' of Flores, were a one-meter-tall human species that made tools and hunted dwarf elephants until about 50,000 years ago.