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Insatiable curiosity is one quality the human spirit shares with almost no other creatures on Earth. Perhaps only a handful of the most intelligent mammals share our sense of curiosity but humanity is almost completely immersed in seeking answers to the most abstract of questions. Do dolphins and chimpanzees wonder if there is life on worlds circling other stars? This and other questions are bound up with the quest for an explanation of why our ancestors migrated out of Africa thousands of years ago.

Drawing upon scientific articles published over the past few years, writer Michael Martinez has proposed a chronology for what he calls the Age of Adam, a time dating to about 60,000 years ago. “Adam” is the biological male ancestor of all known modern peoples around the world, with possibly a very small handful of exceptions in the Andamanese islands off the coast of India. Drawing on major sources like Discovery Channel’s archaeology news and Science Daily, Martinez postulates a period of conflict may have arisen among the successful male descendants of Adam in southern Africa, leading to an expulsion of clans and wanderers who found their way to other parts of the Earth.

Competition for resources may have become intense after a super-volcano erupted, but more recent history teaches us that men also compete for women. Displaced males might have been forced to trek thousands of miles to find mates. Small clans may have fled deeper into the rain forests to hide from aggressive clans seeking new wives. Archaeologists have uncovered many pieces of the puzzle and it may be many years before we can form a truly reliable picture.

Science has established that people began using tools and language long, long ago. Now recent studies are suggesting that sophisticated culture including a belief in the afterlife and supernatural, artistic expression, trade and communication between distant groups, and possibly even primitive architecture may have arisen in Africa as much as 100,000 to 120,000 years ago. Science still has much to learn about the past but one thing is clear: we have to abandon our stereotypes and rethink how we look at our ancient ancestors.

Whether the differentiations between the high groupings termed Classes and Sub-kingdoms might be accounted for in the same way is a much more difficult question. The differences that distinguish the mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes from each other, though immense, nonetheless appear to be of a similar nature as those that describe a mouse from an elephant or a swallow from a pheasant. But the vertebrate animals and the insects are so largely diverse in their form and structure and in the very design of their body structure, that protesters may not unreasonably question whether it true that the creatures can all have been derived from a single common ascendant by way of the very same natural laws that explicate the distinction of the various species of birds or of reptiles.

In the pre-Darwin era, the broad majority of natural scientists held firmly to the belief that species were ontologically produced, and had not been derived from other species by any action perceivable to us. There was, then, no inquiry relating to the origination of families, orders, and classes, because the “origin of species” was thought to be an unsolvable problem. Today all transformed. The general scientific and literary world assumes, as a matter of general knowledge, the origin of species from other related species by the ordinary process of natural birth.

What we may expect a trusted theory will allow us to grasp and follow out in some detail those changes in the form, structure, and relations of animals and plants that are transformed in short periods of time, geologically speaking, and which we can observe now at present time. We may expect our theory to explain adequately most of the lesser and superficial differences which separate one species from another. And, in conclusion, we may expect that it describe many troubles and to harmonize many incongruities in the overly complex affinities and relations of living things. Darwin’s theory acheives these demands. It establishes how, by way of some of the most universal and ever-acting laws in nature, new species are needfully produced, while the old species become extinct. Evolution theory also enables us to understand how the constant processes of these laws during the long periods is calculated to bring about those greater divergences represented by the distinct genera, families, and orders into which all living things are classified by naturalists.

Fortunately the weightiness of this matter has been lightened with a good dose of evolution humor, popping up on web sites and office doors. See some of this evolution humor here.

Polyester cloth was first invented in England in 1941 by British scientists John Whinfield and James Dickson. However, polyester fabric did not begin to be produced in the United States until 1950 when American manufacturer, Dupont, purchased the patent rights.

Polyester material is characterized by its power to resist both fading and shrinking making it the most widely utilized material in the production of apparel since 1960. Polyester also became a frequent alternative in the production of table linens, chair coverings, placemats, table skirts and aprons. As well received as it was for apparel and home decor, 100% poly fabric was not the best alternative for napkins. Table napkins made of 100% polyester lacked absorption and did not have the feel of cotton, which one associated with expensive table linen.

Enter spun poly fabric. Spun polyester was initially made for heavy-duty use and household furnishings. An effort by Johnston Industries to produce a boat cover from spun polyester lead to the discovery of a lighter weight poly that had an better feel to it. They also learned that dying made the cloth even softer and determined that this was a material that would be ideal for table cloths.

This discovery was thought to be so significant that Johnston Industries ceased their development of boat covers. Johnston Industries decided that, in order to make the spun poly better that they had made, it would be necessary to hire Bob Pomeranz, an expert in textiles. Bob’s expert knowledge of spinning machines allowed him to spin a fabric free from pilling, the wretched fiber clusters that detract from a cloth’s appearance. Johnston Industries’ end product was a durable table cloth resistant to shrinking with the power to hold its colouring and release soil.

Table linens made of spun poly could now possess the texture of cotton fiber cloths and most importantly, unlike cotton, a spun poly table linen would not fade after many a washings. To a greater extent, the more you washed a spun poly table linen the softer and better it would feel to the touch.

Over time the textile industry started to utilize spun polyester for chair coverings, place mats, skirting, aprons and even napkins. In fact, spun polyester table napkins were quite absorbant, a feature that 100% polyester napkins lacked.

So, the next time you feel a product made of polyester cloth, ask yourself, is it 100% polyester or spun polyester?