Month: March 2017

If you’re beginning to suspect you’re the only one who hasn’t recently taken a trip to Iceland, you’re not alone. The are a lot of great reasons to visit the Nordic island, including the hyper-blue lagoons, the stunning waterfalls, and the one-of-a-kind cuisine. But above all: getting there is super inexpensive right now. 

According to Airfare Spot, flights to Reykjavik from Boston and New York are $100-$300 round trip. We’re not trying to tell you where to vacation, but with prices like that, you can’t afford not to go. 

Using WOW Air, you can fly out June 5-20 and come back June 6-9, or 12-16. Of course, flight prices change quickly, so you may have to do some additional browsing to see what’s available. (Check out the ticket situation on Priceline.) If you do decide to go, please send us a postcard! 

Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers, including Amazon, and may receive a small percentage of any sale. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Good luck deal hunting!

Since being formed in 1980, the Phoenix-based Make-A-Wish Foundation has become synonymous with fostering goodwill toward children with serious illnesses. Anyone under the age of 18 can petition the organization with a request for a trip, celebrity visit, or other special arrangement. In almost all cases, they’ll grant the child’s wish via fundraising efforts and the generosity of volunteers. An average of one wish is granted every 35 minutes. 

Take a look at 11 other facts that help illustrate how these donors and good samaritans can give an ailing child a reason to smile.

1. THE FIRST MAKE-A-WISH RECIPIENT GOT THREE WISHES.

Make-A-Wish began in the spring of 1980, when officers at Arizona’s Department of Public Safety learned that 7-year-old leukemia patient Chris Greicius longed to experience what it was like to be a police officer. After seeing how happy it made Greicius to wear a uniform and go on patrol, Arizona DPS officer Frank Shankwitz and his fellow officers started the Make-A-Wish Foundation to help others like him.

In 1981, Poncho “Bopsy” Salazar became the first child granted a wish under their banner. Like Greicius, he was a 7-year-old with leukemia; the Foundation arranged for Salazar to hop on a fire truck, visit Disneyland, and take a ride in a hot air balloon. The story received national coverage and led to a number of chapters opening up around the country.

2. SORRY, BUT THEY WON’T TAKE YOU HUNTING.

Make-A-Wish tries to do everything in its collective power to fulfill the dreams of kids with life-threatening illnesses, but they draw the line at one request: They can’t take anyone hunting. Since 2000, the company has prohibited their funds or volunteers from facilitating a hunting trip, citing safety concerns and protests from animal rights organizations. In 1996, the Foundation was criticized for helping a teenager realize his dream to shoot and kill a Kodiak bear in Alaska. The organization also draws the line at any wish involving firearms.

3. HALF OF ALL WISHES INVOLVE DISNEY.

While children have a variety of wishes they’d like granted, the Mouse seems to take up a large part of their ambitions. According to Make-A-Wish, Disney’s theme parks, princesses, and other properties make up approximately half of all wishes granted. Through 2015, that means more than 100,000 Disney-related requests were fulfilled.

4. ONE KID WANTED TO STAR IN A GODZILLA MOVIE.

In 2014, a 5-year-old boy named Maddex came to the attention of the Chicago chapter of Make-A-Wish for wishing to destroy the city. To accommodate him, a film crew was assembled that allowed Maddex to dress up as Godzilla (or “Madzilla”) and stomp all over a tiny replica of the skyline. The five-minute film was estimated to cost roughly $1 million in expenses and donated time.

5. THEY SEND KIDS TO THE SUPER BOWL EVERY YEAR.

Seats for the Super Bowl can be nearly impossible to come by, but Make-A-Wish’s relationship with the NFL means many wishers get VIP access to the stadium. The organizations have collaborated every year since 1982 to make sure at least one is in attendance; 13 kids attended Super Bowl 50 in San Francisco last year.

6. SOME KIDS DONATE THEIR WISHES TO OTHERS.

There’s no binding legalese that says a Make-A-Wish recipient has to keep a wish to themselves. When 12-year-old Lucas Hobbs became eligible for a wish after being diagnosed with stage-3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma, he decided to use it to pay back the Minnesota hospital that took care of him while he was undergoing chemotherapy. He had a food truck park outside the facility and took orders from patients who wanted something a little more tasty than the standard-issue hospital fare. He even named a hot dog after his favorite staff member, calling it a “Perkins dog”after his oncologist, Dr. Joanna Perkins.

7. ONE KID’S WISH GOT A LITTLE OUT OF HAND.

In 1989, 7-year-old Craig Shergold pleaded with Atlanta-based Wish Foundation International to assist him with his goal of breaking the Guinness World Record for most get well cards received. Within a year, he garnered over 16 million cards—and it never quite stopped. The flow of letters and correspondence continued unabated, with chain letters urging others to forward mail to Shergold expressing moral support for his struggle with a brain tumor. Make-A-Wish was forced to set up a special hotline to inform the public that they had no involvement in the movement, which went on to top 100 million cards. In 1999, a healthy Shergold asked people to stop. To this day, the Foundation has a page warning that any mail intended for Shergold is forwarded to a recycling center.

8. YOU CAN DONATE TO HELP FULFILL SPECIFIC WISHES.

For decades, Make-A-Wish accepted financial donations without necessarily earmarking the funds for any specific purpose; donors wouldn’t be sure which wish was funded by their generosity. In 2016, the Foundation introduced Wishmaker, an online fundraising portal that allows donors to read personalized stories about wishers and donate funds to help them meet their goal. The Foundation is hoping that individualized projects may help in covering the uptick in wish-related expenses, which now average $10,130, up 30 percent from 2010.

9. JOHN CENA IS A M-A-W LEGEND.

It’s surprising professional wrestler John Cena has any time to train or take bumps in a World Wrestling Entertainment ring. The sports entertainer granted his 500^th wish in 2015, becoming the first celebrity to cross that milestone in the Foundation’s history. (Justin Bieber comes in second, with over 250 wishes to meet him granted.)

10. MACY’S HAS DONATED OVER $100 MILLION.

Make-A-Wish relies heavily on the generosity of donors in order to keep the wishes coming. Retail giant Macy’s has done more than their share, donating over $100 million since 2003. Make-A-Wish estimates that their contributions have directly impacted more than 13,000 kids.

11. THERE’S ONE OTHER THING THEY JUST CAN’T DO.

Virtually anything a child can fantasize about is open for discussion, but Make-A-Wish draws one other hard line beyond their no-hunting-or-firearms mandate: You cannot make a wish for unlimited wishes.  

If you’d like to learn more about Make-A-Wish or volunteer your time and support, visit Make-A-Wish.com.

Last fall, we were pleased to report that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had passed new regulations that prevented Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from sharing the private data of consumers unless the consumer gave express consent to disclose search histories and location data. The regulations also included a provision for protecting consumers from hackers. That win for privacy didn’t last.

According to WIRED, the FCC has suspended the data security rule (the portion that required ISPs to protect customers’ data from hacking and security breaches) before it ever took effect. The reason? The commission is concerned that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) may soon implement rules regulating how much personal data individual websites like Google and Facebook can collect, and they don’t want to create a confusing and divergent list of restrictions for the providers themselves. (The FCC is charged with handling carriers, while the FTC’s purview includes specific sites.)

If you prefer not to wait for all this bureaucracy to decongest itself, there are still steps you can take to minimize your personal information being shared. To prevent Google from keeping tabs on your physical location via mobile devices, go to your Timeline and click “Pause Location History” as well as “Delete Location History.” Under Privacy, slide the “Location Reporting” button off.

You can also use a virtual private network, or VPN, to hide your IP address from your ISP. Most browsers also offer privacy settings that allow you to browse without saving cookies or your search history, although that won’t stop your ISP from being able to examine your data.

[h/t WIRED]

Penthouse—the most prominent authority on such matters—once called it “a sexual Disneyland.” It housed a gift shop containing adult novelty items. A stark-naked statue of Apollo greeted visitors in the lobby entrance. A “social director” was on hand to foster banter among couples and make off-color jokes to loosen their libidos. Its rooms were wall-carpeted and mirrored.

It was Cove Haven, and for decades it was the premier Poconos resort destination for newlyweds across the northeast. Its popularity was chiefly attributed to two things: the marketing acumen of co-founder Morris B. Wilkins, and the iconic, charmingly tacky hot tub he designed that was shaped like a heart.

Born to Russian immigrants in 1925, Wilkins was an unlikely savior of the honeymoon hospitality industry. After a stint as a submariner in World War II, the Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania native started working as an electrician. Business went well until Hurricane Diane swept up his office space and equipment in 1955, leveling all of his material goods. Settling in as a freelancer, he and pal Harold “Obie” O’Brien were working on renovations for a Poconos-area hotel when they both noticed the accommodations were absolutely awful. The men believed they could do better, so they purchased an 18-room resort, the Hotel Pocopaupac in Lakeville, in 1958.

Since the end of the war, gas shortages had led to more and more newlyweds taking the shorter trip to the Poconos—a four-county area about the size of Delaware—rather than Niagara Falls. What was missing was a sense of levity or fun. Wilkins and O’Brien changed the name of the hotel to Cove Haven and promptly began renovating the property so that it might appeal to the increasingly provocative tastes of 1960s couples. Ostentatious accents replaced neutral colors; the room, he believed, would become the star attraction for those seeking a reservation.

But Wilkins needed time. When business was slow, he’d conserve electricity by holding business meetings in the dark. And despite his ability to recognize how hospitality would need to change, it took a few years for him to figure out exactly how.

According to “Honest” Phil Policare, Cove Haven’s “Chief Excitement Officer,” Wilkins and O’Brien had their epiphany one night in 1963, when the two were struggling to cart a round hot tub down a flight of stairs. In order to make the turn at the bottom, the men temporarily pushed in one side of the flexible material and noticed it resembled a heart. Other accounts mention that Wilkins dreamed up the notion in the middle of the night, sketching a heart over a concrete floor.

However he came to the idea, Wilkins poured concrete for the first six heart-shaped tubs himself, with dozens more added as Cove Haven continued to expand to its eventual size of 236 rooms.

The Sweetheart Tub was tiled in red, comfortable enough for two, and featured mirrors on the walls. Word of mouth quickly spread, as did Wilkins’s particular design aesthetic. Soon, Cove Haven was home to guests—couples only—who came to sightsee the attractions in their quarters: circular or heart-shaped beds, multi-level rooms, and private swimming pools.

Eager to expand, the partners sold Cove Haven to Caesars Resorts in 1969. (O’Brien passed away five years later in a plane crash.) Wilkins promptly opened two more Poconos-area resorts, just in time for an explosion of popularity after the heart-shaped tub was photographed for a 1971 Life magazine spread about the opening of Interstate 80. The exposure was so positive that Wilkins had to borrow $10,000 the following week just so that he had enough liquid cash to print more resort brochures.

That single photo in Life helped make the heart-shaped tub synonymous with honeymoon accommodations, encapsulating everything anyone would ever need to know about the atmosphere in the region. As Wilkins watched his Poconos empire grow through the next few decades, he became known as the innovator behind the beautifully kitschy newlywed experience.

With the success of the heart-shaped tub driving business, Wilkins came up a more ambitious idea: He wanted to install a 7-foot-tall champagne glass in his suites that could double as a whirlpool. It would be novel, look terrific in advertising, and create a little bit of mystery: without a ladder, how could couples even get in?

Wilkins’s financiers at Caesars weren’t interested. They dismissed the idea as silly and let it percolate in the hotelier’s head for nearly a decade before giving in. Debuting in 1984, the champagne glass whirlpool became another Poconos and Cove Haven trademark, appearing to be balanced on a thin stem while couples marinated in the bubbly water. Rooms featuring the glass were booked as far as 18 months out. (The secret to getting in was simple: the living room where it was located was sunken, and guests would climb in from the second-floor bedroom.)

Business continued booming through the 1980s. Rooms went for $380 for two nights, and Wilkins was hailed as a hospitality legend. Heart-shaped everything seemed to pervade the Poconos, with a quarter of its 16,000 beds cut into the novelty design.

Then airline travel got cheaper, and Vegas got wiser. As airfares went down and rooms in other destination locations began to resemble the Wilkins model, attendance dropped. Several Poconos-area resorts were closed by 1999, the year Wilkins retired.

Today, roughly 437 heart-shaped hot tubs remain in the three Cove Haven resorts, with an untold number installed around the country. While Wilkins had managed to patent his champagne whirlpool, he was unsuccessful in obtaining the same protection for the tub. For $2395, anyone can have one ready to be installed in their own personal lover’s retreat.

Wilkins died at age 90 in 2015. Though he left behind four children, it could be argued he was responsible for many, many more.

“I don’t know how many babies we’ve conceived here,” Wilkins told The Washington Post in 1988. “It must be an army.”

Films such as Apollo 13, Armageddon, and The Martian depict NASA’s Mission Control Center as a place of high stress and nail-biting suspense. But what’s it really like to work there? We got the inside scoop from several current or former flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center’s (JSC) Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas—NASA’s primary Mission Control Center for human spaceflight. (You might know it by its radio call sign “Houston.”) There, flight controllers are responsible for ensuring the safety of astronauts and spacecraft, monitoring the International Space Station (ISS), and providing constant operational support from the ground.

1. “FLIGHT CONTROLLER” IS A GENERAL TERM.

There are a variety of roles that are essential to making Mission Control run smoothly, and “flight controller” is an umbrella term that encompasses many of them. For each mission, a group of engineers, scientists, managers, technicians, biomedical engineers, quality control inspectors, and designers all work together to ensure the safety of astronauts and spacecraft. According to Ben Honey, a NASA ADCO (Attitude Determination and Control Officer) flight controller, team sizes vary from a skeleton crew—the minimum is six people—to more than a dozen individuals.

“A busy day (say, a vehicle docking or spacewalk) could have a full team of at least a dozen people in the front room and many more in support rooms,” Honey tells mental_floss. A skeleton crew, meanwhile, consists of six roles: Flight Director, Ground Control, ETHOS (Environmental Control Systems), SPARTAN (Power Systems), ADCO (Navigation Systems), and CRONUS (Data and Communications Systems), Honey says. But no matter how many people work in Mission Control at any given time, the ultimate responsibility is in the hands of the flight director, who manages the team of flight controllers.

2. THEY’RE YOUNG.

According to NASA Vehicle Systems Engineer Holly Griffith, who worked as a flight controller for the Space Shuttle Electrical Power System at the Johnson Space Center from 2004 until 2012, people are often surprised to learn how young most flight controllers are. “I was 25 when I started, and the majority of my colleagues were similar ages,” she tells mental_floss. Even during Apollo 11—the 1969 NASA mission that landed the first two humans on the moon—the average age in the control room was just 28 years old.

That youth can be a big asset when it comes to working the long hours required of the job. As Griffith points out, young flight controllers who lack the added responsibilities of marriage and children are often more willing (and able) to work nights, weekends, and holidays. (It’s not so much that NASA specifically recruits young people for the job, interviewees say, as that young people are more likely to apply.)

3. GETTING THEIR JOB IS NO EASY FEAT.

Flight controllers at NASA come from a variety of educational backgrounds, but most earn degrees in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, or mathematics). Some flight controllers earn additional degrees in business or communications, which may help prepare them for the job’s high level of cooperation and demanding team management responsibilities. After completing their education, grads who want to work in Mission Control may apply to a NASA internship or work for a NASA contractor that provides personnel to NASA.

Once they get their foot in the door at NASA, aspiring flight controllers must complete up to a year of rigorous training. Depending on the team they want to join, most new hires take classes, get tested on what they’ve learned, and take part in simulations that help them practice how they would respond to surprises such as malfunctioning equipment, a debris strike, depressurization, or a fire. They’re also observed by supervisors while they learn to carry out tasks. The end result of the training process is certification, which is highly individualized depending on which role a flight controller is aiming toward. Once certified, the flight controller is responsible for carrying out their job duties without a supervisor watching over them.

4. COMMUNICATION SKILLS CAN MAKE OR BREAK THEM.

Forget the stereotype of a nerdy scientist who doesn’t speak or interact well with others. While flight controllers are first and foremost engineers, responsible for applying an enormous amount of technical knowledge, good communication skills are equally important.

“For a job in engineering, communication was just as much a part of the job as technical knowledge,” Griffith explains. “We were set up in the room by our systems, and if something in the power system fails that cuts power to a fan in the environmental system, I may need to be able to explain higher-up electrical concepts to the environmental person and they will need to tell me why it’s important that we get the fan back ASAP.” The ability to communicate accurately and succinctly with colleagues, especially under pressure if a major failure occurs, is vital. “Much of our training is spent on good communication and our communication skills are a huge part of our feedback and could even fail you in the certification flow if not good enough,” Griffith says.

5. THEY SPEND A LOT OF TIME DOING PAPERWORK.

“Much of a flight controller’s job is paperwork and the integration and coordination that go along with that paperwork,” NASA flight controller Robert Frost writes on Quora. When Space Shuttle missions were still running (the Shuttle retired in 2011), that paperwork could start years before a mission. Even today, tiny changes in the technology or software used aboard the ISS can involve multiple international stakeholders, all of whom need to be kept informed via paperwork.

Once a mission begins, flight controllers are also “sitting console”—being perched at a large desk with multiple monitors receiving data from equipment in space. Their job is to continuously monitor that data, and make sure each piece of equipment is working as it should be. That way, Mission Control on the ground stays connected to what’s going on up above.

Even then, “we’re always doing paperwork—we’re constantly keeping a log,” Griffith says. “We have a Word template that logs MET (Mission Elapsed Time) and GMT of every call/action from/to the crew, other flight controllers, the Flight Director, etc. We log everything and the other team reads this during handovers.”

6. THEY DON’T GET MUCH VITAMIN D.

Because the ISS is a 24/7/365 operation, Mission Controllers are used to working in a dark room, seeing only the artificial light emitted by their monitors. “Most of us have engineering degrees so are already used to working nights during college or in labs doing research, so this part [of the job] doesn’t really take much adjustment,” Honey says.

But while they might miss seeing sunlight stream through the windows, Mission Controllers do have ways to get some Vitamin D. “We don’t have to sit inside Mission Control for our nine hour shift without leaving,” explains Honey. “On most shifts (but not all), there are times we can take a break, and I will often go for a short walk outside to get some sun if it is a day shift.”

7. BAD WEATHER IS ONE OF THEIR BIGGEST CHALLENGES.

If a hurricane or other natural disaster strikes Houston and shuts down power to Mission Control, NASA has a backup control center at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. According to ISS flight controller Pat Patterson, who works at Marshall but is part of the Mission Control team in Houston, one of their greatest challenges is dealing with weather. “Since our control room operates around the clock, 365 days a year, and we are in Alabama, even snow and ice can result in issues getting to and from work,” he reveals in a Reddit AMA. “When hurricanes shut down Mission Control at JSC in Houston, key flight controllers came here to use a backup control room.” And if that backup center in Huntsville loses power or undergoes major maintenance, flight controllers have yet another backup location in Huntsville they can head to. “It’s small and only has enough space for a bare-bones team, but it works,” Mason Hall, another ISS flight controller, writes on Reddit.

8. COFFEE AND SNACKS KEEP THEM GOING.

With limited breaks and long shifts, people who work in Mission Control turn to caffeine and snacks to help them stay alert. “As with any 24/7 ops facility, food and coffee are a big part of what keeps us going,” Honey says. “People often bring in lots of goodies for big events. Sometimes we will have a special cake for a crew’s undocking day, for example. But we also just like to stock snacks at the consoles to get us through the night shifts.”

9. THEY’RE INTIMATELY ACQUAINTED WITH ACRONYMS.

To work in MCC at NASA, you’ve got to be good with acronyms. Flight controllers speak (and think) in abbreviations, such as FDO (Flight Dynamics Officer), EECOM (Electrical, Environmental, and Consumables Manager), PDRS (Payload Deploy Retrieval System), and MMACS (Maintenance, Mechanical, Arm, and Crew Systems). Flight controllers even have acronyms on their consoles, which describe the function they’re associated with (and sometimes the call signs by which they’re known).

Do all the acronyms ever confuse laypeople? As Hall says: “I have a friend who misreads my ‘ISS’ tweets as ‘ISIS’ every now and then, and it makes me laugh!”

10. GENDER IS LESS OF AN ISSUE THAN IT ONCE WAS.

All flight controllers at NASA were male until 1972, and all flight directors were male until 1991. But today NASA makes an effort to be diverse. According to Griffith, who has had four female managers, gender was fairly mixed during her time at mission control. “I feel like I’ve been so lucky at NASA—at one point our group was 50/50 men/women.”

“Could we be doing better?” she asks. “Yes, but that brings up another question—overall fewer women tend to go into things like mechanical engineering (in the U.S.). When I graduated women were 20% of engineering grads … that number isn’t much different now.”

11. THEY HAVE MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT THE MOVIES THAT DEPICT THEM.

Mission Controllers are divided about movies that depict them and their colleagues, arguing that some films are accurate in their portrayals while others are laughably inaccurate. “Honestly it depends. The Martian was fantastic and Andy Weir did an amazing job researching before he wrote the book. Apollo 13 was also great,” Griffith says.

Her take on Armageddon? “Nah. I mean I liked the film but if what you’re going for is realism I wouldn’t pick that one,” she says.

12. THEY HAVE THEIR OWN CREED.

Given the huge responsibilities they shoulder, flight controllers take their job seriously. So seriously, in fact, that they have their own creed, which is posted in Mission Control. Besides pledging to strive for discipline, teamwork, and toughness, the flight controller’s creed acknowledges the privilege (and burden) of holding people’s lives in their hands; they pledge “To always be aware that suddenly and unexpectedly we may find ourselves in a role where our performance has ultimate consequences.”

13. THEY MARVEL AT HOW INCREDIBLE THEIR JOB IS.

Working for NASA is a normal job with coworkers, bosses, and a paycheck, but the surreal nature of supporting space missions does hit flight controllers from time to time. Besides helping to advance our understanding of science, technology, and space exploration, flight controllers have the privilege of communicating with humans who live and work approximately 250 miles above the surface of Earth.

“Sometimes, it’s really crazy to think about what we actually do for a living,” Hall writes. “Sometimes we go outside and watch the ISS fly over at dusk. We see it soar across the evening sky like a really bright star, and then we can go inside our control center and watch live video from inside that bright point of light and see the astronauts floating around and performing science experiments. It really blows your mind!”

 
Hundreds of thousands of years ago, a variety of scruffy hominins roamed the planet, making tools, chasing down dinner, sitting around fires, and looking at the stars. Unfortunately, they didn’t leave much behind. Figuring out how and when these populations spread across the globe and intermingled with each other is a huge puzzle, one with most of the pieces missing.

That’s why scientists are excited about the discovery of two archaic human skulls in China reported in the journal Science today, March 2. These 100,000-year-old fossils have a mix of traits—and even some similarities with Neanderthals—which bolsters the idea that the precursors to modern humans were a diverse bunch who routinely interbred with one another.

Mental_floss spoke to report authors Erik Trinkaus, a professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and paleoanthropologist Xiu-Jie Wu, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, as well as several experts in human evolution who were not involved in the current research.

The two broken skulls were discovered in the outskirts of Xuchang in central China at the Lingjing site, which was a spring for most of its history. The water consistently attracted people and animals over many millennia, and scientists have found at the site thousands bones of creatures like extinct deer and rhino relatives, as well as much more recent Bronze Age remains.

When the water table was lowered in the area in 2007, Lingjing became drier, and scientists were able to start an excavation, says Trinkaus. While digging, the researchers found the two skulls of archaic humans. They died in the Late Pleistocene, about 100,000 years ago.

“These were hunters and gatherers who, if you saw them, would look basically like people today,” Trinkaus says. “We would probably find them rather dirty and uncouth, but they were basically people.”

The skulls show that these almost-people have some similarities with early modern humans, including a large brain size and modest brow ridges. But they also have some important physical differences. Their low and broad braincase is characteristic of earlier, more primitive eastern Eurasian humans. Meanwhile, the shape of the semicircular canals (bones near the inner ear) and arrangement of the back of the skulls are similar to contemporary Neanderthals from western Eurasia.

This mosaic of physical features “suggests a pattern of regional population continuity in eastern Eurasia, combined with shared long-term trends in human biology and population connections across Eurasia,” says Wu. Those long-term trends include increasing brain size and decreasing massiveness of the skull—patterns that are also seen in humans in western Eurasia and Africa during this time period, which suggests some trends could be universal among humans, Trinkaus says.

The human-evolution experts we spoke to gave a number of reasons why the find is significant.

“It is a fascinating new discovery,” says Lynne Schepartz, a paleoanthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. “The presence of the Neanderthal traits is very clear and, in my opinion, unquestionable. This discovery demonstrates the diversity of eastern Asian populations in the Late Pleistocene, reflecting their roots in earlier Homo erectus populations and then increased gene flow and interaction with peoples from the West.”

Fred Smith, an anthropologist at Illinois State University, says the skulls add to two growing points of consensus in paleoanthropology: “Neanderthals had extensive evolutionary influences beyond their core area of western Eurasia, and archaic human groups routinely hybridized with each other, and with early modern humans.”

In fact, this study highlights how the once-common image of Neanderthals as an anomalous European population, distinguished by a set of regional peculiarities, is now “looking increasingly dubious,” according to Boston University anthropologist Matt Cartmill. Instead, he says, recent research suggests that some of the traits we think of as unique to Neanderthals could have been widely distributed in late archaic human populations all across Eurasia. “I am beginning to wonder how useful the concept ‘Neanderthal’ is.”

Other researchers say the skulls’ combination of primitive features and Neanderthal-like traits should be somewhat expected in archaic humans in East Asia from this time period. “This is exactly what the Denisovans (an Asian sister group of the Western Eurasian Neanderthals) should be,” says Jean-Jacques Hublin, director of the department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

The authors of the paper, however, have shied away from assigning a species name or category to these archaic humans just yet. Trinkaus says there isn’t enough known about the Denisovans and that using such a category would not be helpful for understanding the messy population dynamics of archaic humans.

“It’s not the kind of thing that you can make a simple diagram of with lines on a piece of paper,” he explains. “It’s a very complex process.”

But Trinkaus is hopeful that further research at Lingjing, along with discoveries elsewhere in China and East Asia, will shed more light on what these ancestral humans were like. “In the last couple of decades there’s been a renaissance of Pleistocene archaeology and paleontology in that part of the world,” he says.