I think that those fossil finds are fascinating so much so that I almost switched my degree to archeology...what could be more fun than sleuthing out the location (and possibly getting closer to the oldest, deepest parts of our brains) find a good site and then start putting together the clues to piece together that hominids life and demise.
One question that I am intrigued with is that the neanderthals actually had larger brains then homo sapiens and both lived on this planet at the same time...why did the neanderthals die out? Some say that there is evidence that they were not capable of speech and therefore homo sapiens social skill set grew exponentially faster.....I wonder how it would be to actually be on this planet with another species of human......
jeesh, the parallels are mind boggling.