What We Learned About Humanity in 2012

By Charles Choi, LiveScience Contributor | LiveScience.com

The controversial extinct human lineage known as "hobbits" gained a face this year, one of many projects that shed light in 2012 on the history of modern humans and their relatives. Other discoveries include the earliest known controlled use of fire and the possibility that Neanderthals or other extinct human lineages once sailed to the Mediterranean.

Here's a look at what we learned about ourselves through our ancestors this year.

We're not alone

A trove of discoveries this year revealed a host of other extinct relatives of modern humans. For instance, researchers unearthed 3.4-million-year-old fossils of a hitherto unknown species that lived about the same time and place as Australopithecus afarensis, a leading candidate for the ancestor of the human lineage. In addition, fossils between 1.78 million and 1.95 million years old discovered in 2007 and 2009 in northern Kenya suggest that at least two extinct human species lived alongside Homo erectus, a direct ancestor of our species. Moreover, fossils only between 11,500 and 14,500 years old hint that a previously unknown type of human called the "Red Deer Cave People" once lived in China.

Caveman sex

Conservative folks would have us believe that sexual intercourse has only one true purpose: procreation. The fact that sex has obviously evolved to be a pleasurable activity seems to have passed these dinosaurs by altogether, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that sex is actually a whole lot of fun! Perhaps they’re just not getting any?!

These mental Neanderthals often claim that in the animal world, sex is all business and no fun, suggesting that this should also apply to humans. But scientists have clearly refuted these allegations: animals engage in a staggering range of wild and wonderful sexual activities, so why shouldn’t we?

What about our ancient forebears, the early humans in the Stone Age, though? Surely for them sex was all about a bloke wrapped in bear pelt dragging a suitable female into a cave by her hair for a perfunctory shag to expand the gene pool and ensure the survival of the clan. Not at all! It turns out that our ancestors have enjoyed sex as a pleasurable act for literally much longer than anyone can remember – for tens of thousands of years!