LAST MAN STANDING

Some 50,000 years ago, Homo sapiens beat other hominids to become the only surviving
species. Kate Ravilious reveals how we did it.

A.

Today, there are over seven billion people living on Earth. No other species has exerted as
much influence over the planet as us. But turn the clock back 80,000 years and we were one of
a number of species roaming the Earth. Our own species, Homo sapiens (Latin for ’wise man'),
was most successful in Africa. In western Eurasia, the Neanderthals dominated, while Homo
erectus may have lived in Indonesia. Meanwhile, an unusual finger bone and tooth, discovered
in Denisova cave in Siberia in 2008, have led scientists to believe that yet another human
population - the Denisovans - may also have been widespread across Asia. Somewhere along
the line, these other human species died out, leaving Homo sapiens as the sole survivor. So
what made us the winners in the battle for survival?

B.

Some 74.000 years ago, the Toba ‘supervolcano' on the Indonesian island of Sumatra erupted.
The scale of the event was so great that ash from the eruption was flung as far as eastern India,
more than 2,000 kilometres away. Oxford archaeologist Mike Petraglia and his team have
uncovered thousands of stone tools buried underneath the Toba ash. The mix of hand axes and
spear tips have led Petraglia to speculate that Homo sapiens and Homo erectus were both living
in eastern India prior to the Toba eruption. Based on careful examination of the tools and dating
of the sediment layers where they were found, Petraglia and his team suggest that Homo
sapiens arrived in eastern India around 78.000 years ago, migrating out of Africa and across
Arabia during a favourable climate period. After their arrival, the simple tools belonging to
Homo erectus seemed to lessen in number and eventually disappear completely. 'We think that
Homo sapiens had a more efficient hunting technology, which could have given them the edge',
says Petraglia, 'Whether the eruption of Toba also played a role in the extinction of the Homo
erectus-like species is unclear to us.

C.

Some 45,000 years later, another fight for survival took place. This time, the location was
Europe and the protagonists were another species, the Neanderthals. They were a highly
successful species that dominated the European landscape for 300.000 years. Yet within just a
few thousand years of the arrival of Homo sapiens, their numbers plummeted. They eventually
disappeared from the landscape around 30.000 years ago, with their last known refuge being
southern Iberia, including Gibraltar. Initially, Homo sapiens and Neanderthals lived alongside
each other and had no reason to compete. But then Europe’s climate swung into a cold,
inhospitable, dry phase. ‘Neanderthal and Homo sapiens populations had to retreat to refugia
(pockets of habitable land). This heightened competition between the two groups,’ explains
Chris Stringer, an anthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London.

D.

Both species were strong and stockier than the average human today, but Neanderthals were
particularly robust, ‘Their skeletons show that they had broad shoulders and thick necks,' says
Stringer. ‘Homo sapiens, on the other hand, had longer forearms, which undoubtedly enabled
them to throw a spear from some distance, with less danger and using relatively little energy,’
explains Stringer. This long-range ability may have given Homo sapiens an advantage in
hunting. When it came to keeping warm, Homo sapiens had another skill: weaving and sewing.
Archaeologists have uncovered simple needles fashioned from ivory and bone alongside Homo
sapiens, dating as far back as 35,000 years ago. ‘Using this technology, we could use animal
skins to make ourselves tents, warm clothes and fur boots,’ says Stringer. In contrast,
Neanderthals never seemed to master sewing skills, instead relying on pinning skins together
with thorns.

E.

A thirst for exploration provided Homo sapiens with another significant advantage over
Neanderthals. Objects such as shell beads and flint tools, discovered many miles from their
source, show that our ancestors travelled over large distances, in order to barter and exchange
useful materials, and share ideas and knowledge. By contrast, Neanderthals tended to keep
themselves to themselves, living in small groups. They misdirected their energies by only
gathering resources from their immediate surroundings and perhaps failing to discover new
technologies outside their territory.

F.

Some of these differences in behaviour may have emerged because the two species thought in
different ways. By comparing skull shapes, archaeologists have shown that Homo sapiens had a
more developed temporal lobe - the regions at the side of the brain, associated with listening,
language and long-term memory. 'We think that Homo sapiens had a significantly more
complex language than Neanderthals and were able to comprehend and discuss concepts such
as the distant past and future', says Stringer. Penny Spikins, an archaeologist at the University
of York, has recently suggested that Homo sapiens may also have had a greater diversity of
brain types than Neanderthals. ‘Our research indicates that high-precision tools, new hunting
technologies and the development of symbolic communication may all have come about
because they were willing to include people with "different" minds and specialised roles in
their society,’ she explains. 'We see similar kinds of injuries on male and female Neanderthal
skeletons, implying there was no such division of labour,' says Spikins.
G.

Thus by around 30,000 years ago, many talents and traits were well established in Homo
sapiens societies but still absent from Neanderthal communities. Stringer thinks that the
Neanderthals were just living in the wrong place at the wrong time. 'They had to compete with
Homo sapiens during a phase of very unstable climate across Europe. During each rapid
climate fluctuation, they may have suffered greater losses of people than Homo sapiens, and
thus were slowly worn down,’ he says. ‘If the climate had remained stable throughout, they
might still be here.’

The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-G. Which paragraph contains the following
information?

NB You may use any letter more than once.

1. a comparison of a range of physical features of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens

2. reference to items that were once used for trade
3. mention of evidence for the existence of a previously unknown human species
4. mention of the part played by ill fortune in the downfall of Neanderthal society
5. reference to the final geographical location of Neanderthals

OUT OF AFRICA: SOLAR ENERGY FROM THE SAHARA

Vivienne Wait reports on how the Sahara Desert could offer a truly green solution to Europe’s
energy problems.

A.

For years, the Sahara has been regarded by many Europeans as a terra incognita* of little
economic value or importance. But this idea may soon change completely. Politicians and
scientists on both sides of the Mediterranean are beginning to focus on the Sahara’s potential to
provide power for Europe in the future. They believe the desert’s true value comes from the
fact that it is dry and empty. Some areas of the Sahara reach 45 degrees centigrade on many
afternoons. It is, in other words, a gigantic natural storehouse of solar energy.

B.

A few years ago, scientists began to calculate just how much energy the Sahara holds. They
were astonished at the answer. In theory, a 90,600 square kilometre chunk of the Sahara -
smaller than Portugal and a little over 1% of its total area - could yield the same amount of
electricity as all the world’s power plants combined. A smaller square of 15,500 square
kilometres - about the size of Connecticut - could provide electricity for Europe’s 500 million
people. 'I admit I was sceptical until I did the calculations myself,’ says Michael Pawlyn,
director of Exploration Architecture, one of three British environmental companies comprising
the Sahara Forest Project, which is testing solar plants in Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
Pawlyn calls the Sahara’s potential ’staggering’.

C.

At the moment, no one is proposing the creation of a solar power station the size of a small
country. But a relatively well-developed technology exists, which proponents say could turn
the Sahara’s heat and sunlight into a major source of electricity - Concentrating Solar Power
(CSP). Unlike solar panels, which convert sunlight directly into electricity, CSP utilises mirrors
which focus light on water pipes or boilers to produce very hot steam to operate the turbines of
generators. Small CSP plants have produced power in California’s Mojave Desert since the
1980s. The Sahara Forest Project proposes building CSP plants in areas below sea level (the
Sahara has several such depressions) so that sea water can flow into them. This water would
then be purified and used for powering turbines and washing dust off the mirrors. Waste water
would then supply irrigation to areas around the stations, creating lush oases - hence the
’forest’ in the group’s name.

D.

But producing Significant quantities of electricity means building huge arrays of mirrors and
pipes across hundreds of miles of remote desert, which is expensive. Gerry Wolff, an engineer
who heads DESERTEC, an international consortium of solar-power scientists, says they have
estimated it will cost about $59 billion to begin transmitting power from the Sahara by 2020.

E.

Building plants is just part of the challenge. One of the drawbacks to CSP technology is that it
works at maximum efficiency only in sunny, hot climates - and deserts tend to be distant from
population centres. To supply Europe with 20% of its electricity needs, more than 19,300
kilometres of cables would need to be laid under the Mediterranean, says Gunnar Asplund,
head of HVDC research at ABB Power Technologies in Ludvika, Sweden. Indeed, to use
renewable sources of power, including solar, wind and tidal, Europe will need to build
completely new electrical grids. That’s because existing infrastructures, built largely for the
coal-fired plants that supply 80% of Europe’s power, would not be suitable for carrying the
amount of electricity generated by the Sahara. Germany’s government-run Aerospace Centre,
which researches energy, estimates that replacing those lines could raise the cost of building
solar plants in the Sahara and sending significant amounts of power to Europe to about $485
billion over the next 40 years. Generous government subsidies will be needed. ‘Of course it
costs a lot of money,’ says Asplund. ‘It’s a lot cheaper to burn coal than to make solar power in
the Sahara.’
F.

Meanwhile, some companies are getting started. Seville engineering company Abengoa is
building one solar-thermal plant in Algeria and another in Morocco, while a third is being built
in Egypt by a Spanish-Japanese joint venture. The next step will be to get cables in place.
Although the European Parliament has passed a law that aids investors who help the continent
reach its goal of getting 20% of its power from renewable energy by 2020, it could take years
to create the necessary infrastructure.

G.

Nicholas Dunlop, secretary-general of the London-based NGO e-Parliament, thinks companies

should begin transmitting small amounts of solar power as soon as the North African plants
begin operating, by linking a few cable lines under the Med. 'I call it the Lego method,’ he
says. ‘Build it piece by piece.’ If It can be shown that power from the Sahara can be produced
profitably, he says, companies and governments will soon jump in. If they do, perhaps airplane
passengers flying across the Sahara will one day count the mirrors and patches of green instead
of staring at sand.

*terra incognita - Latin, meaning ‘an unknown land'

Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A-G.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

1. a mention of systems which could not be used

2. estimates of the quantity of power the Sahara could produce
3. a suggestion for how to convince organizations about the Sahara’s potential
4. a short description of the Sahara at present
5. a comparison of the costs of two different energy sources

Look at the following statements (Questions 6-9) and the list of organizations below.

Match each statement with the correct organization, A-G.

1. They have set a time for achieving an objective.

2. They believe that successful small-scale projects will demonstrate that larger projects
are possible.
3. They have a number of renewable energy projects under construction.
4. They are already experimenting with solar-energy installations in other parts of the
world.
THE BURDEN OF THIRST

Millions of women carry water long distances. If they had a tap by their door, whole societies
would be transformed.

By Tina Rosenberg

A.

Aylito Binayo’s feet know the mountain. Even at four in the morning, she can run down the
rocks to the river by starlight alone and climb the steep mountain back up to her village with a
container of water on her back. She has made this journey three times a day since she was a
small child.

So has every other woman in her village of Foro, in the Konso district of south-western
Ethiopia in Africa. Binayo left school when she was eight years old, in part because she had to
help her mother fetch water from the Toiro River. The water is unsafe to drink; every year that
the drought continues, the river carries less water, and its flow is reduced. But it is the only
water Foro has ever had.

B.

In developed parts of the world, people turn on a tap and out pours abundant, clean water. Yet
nearly 900 million people in the world have no access to clean water. Furthermore, 2.5 billion
people have no safe way to get rid of human waste. Polluted water and lack of proper hygiene
cause disease and kill 3.3 million people around the world annually, most of them children. In
southern Ethiopia and in northern Kenya, a lack of rain over the past few years has made even
dirty water hard to find. But soon, for the first time, things are going to change.

C.

Bringing clean water close to villagers’ homes is the key to the problem. Communities where
clean water becomes accessible and plentiful are transformed. All the hours previously spent
hauling water can be used to cultivate more crops, raise more animals or even start a business.
Families spend less time sick or caring for family members who are unwell. Most important,
not having to collect water means girls can go to school and get jobs. The need to fetch water
for the family, or to take care of younger siblings while their mother goes, usually prevents
them ever having this experience.

D.

But the challenges of bringing water to remote villages like those in Konso are overwhelming.
Locating water underground and then reaching it by means of deep wells requires geological
expertise and expensive, heavy machines. Abandoned wells and water projects litter the
villages of Konso. In similar villages around the developing world, the biggest problem with
water schemes is that about half of them break down soon after the groups that built them move
on. Sometimes technology is used that can’t be repaired locally, or spare parts are available
only in the capital.

E.

Today, a UK-based international non-profit organization called WaterAid is tackling the job of
bringing water to the most remote villages of Konso. Their approach combines technologies
proven to last - such as building a sand dam to capture and filter rainwater that would otherwise
drain away. But the real innovation is that WaterAid believes technology is only part of the
solution. Just as important is involving the local community in designing, building and
maintaining new water projects. Before beginning any project, WaterAid asks the community
to create a WASH (water, sanitation, hygiene) committee of seven people. The committee
works with WaterAid to plan projects and involve the village in construction. Then it maintains
and runs the project.

F.

The people of Konso, who grow their crops on terraces they have dug into the sides of
mountains, are famous for hard work. In the village of Orbesho, resident even constructed a
road themselves so that drilling machinery could come in. Last summer, their pump, installed
by the river, was being motorised to push its water to a newly built reservoir on top of a nearby
mountain. From there, gravity will carry it down in pipes to villages on the other side of the
mountain. Residents of those villages have each given some money to help fund the project.
They have made concrete and collected stones for the structures. Now they are digging trenches
to lay pipes. If all goes well, Aylito Binayo will have a tap with safe water just a three-minute
walk from her front door.

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

List of Headings

i. Why some plans have failed

ii. A rural and urban problem

iii. A possible success

iv. Explaining a new management style

v. Some relevant statistics

vi. A regular trip for some people

vii. Treating people for disease

viii. How water can change people’s lives

1. Paragraph A

2. Paragraph B

3. Paragraph C

4. Paragraph D

5. Paragraph E

6. Paragraph F