As I mentioned, an accidental discovery around a decade ago led us to discover that the scientific timeline for human development was indeed only a theory. It turned out that crude tools had been used long before Homo Sapiens even existed.
So what does this teach us?
The impact on our daily lives is pretty insignificant. After all, for decades, we have lived with conventional wisdom positing one thing that isn’t even generally accepted as true anymore — and so what? Was there even a consequence? I would contend there was not.
Nevertheless, as the saying goes: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” I, for one, do _not_ want to be a monkey-man — regardless of how endearing that looks in The Far Side comics. All jokes aside, the early days of Homo Sapiens stand to teach us about how our species functions on a very fundamental level. Without all of the sprawling institutions we’ve built across thousands of years, which were always around — and thus seem related to our biology versus which seem more closely related to time and place?
The discovery from 2011 illustrates that there is far more that we don’t know than that we do know.
Moreover, the difference between scientific theory and scientific law. I should add that I just searched for “scientific theory vs fact,” and I saw numerous pages stating that facts are never final and can be invalidated later. One article cited stomach ulcers as an example. Historically, stomach ulcers were attributed to stress. However, not long ago, a scientific researcher linked them to the bacteria, H Pylori. The notion that a fact can be invalidated subsequently seems especially salient when contemplating things so old that fossils are among the best evidence abailable.