The Oldest Man in the World

Yesterday I woke up for our planned field trip to the beach, only to find that the sky was cloudy and I had a sore throat. It wasn’t a promising start, and I was sort of hoping that the whole thing would be called off due to bad weather. But when I arrived at the front of the dorm at 10 am to find all the kids packed and ready to go, I figured I ought to join them, because a free trip to the beach doesn’t come along every day.
The beach itself was on Halkidiki, a three-pronged peninsula of beaches that’s only a short drive from Thessaloniki. It looks like a really nice place to go swimming. Since most of the beaches I’ve been to are pretty far North (and here I am specifically thinking of Sand Beach in Maine) I automatically brace myself for pain when I decide to immerse any part of my body in seawater. However, the Aegean is warm! In fact, even in cloudy late September, it’s lovely. I was all ready to jump in; however, I realized that I’d forgotten my bathing suit. In hindsight, I think it’s a really good thing I did forget it; I’ve been coughing and sneezing and drinking tea all day today, so jumping in the ocean yesterday would have been a bad idea. However, there were several kids who were also feeling crummy (ah, the hazards of dorm life) so we all played Frisbee while everyone else swam.
Before we went to the beach we made a stopover at Petralona Caves, where we saw the home of “the oldest man in the world.” Basically, it seems that a Greek anthropologist discovered the skeleton of some prehistoric human-like being that he claims is the “oldest man in the world.” According to a friend of mine, this “man” was sent to Aristotle University for carbon dating twice, and it was twice determined that he’s actually much more recent than some other skeletons from Africa. Upon hearing this, the anthropologist who found him promptly decided that nobody else was allowed to do carbon dating on his find. Actually, we may or may not have met said anthropologist; we definitely met an older man who gave us a lengthy speech on the caves, and instructed Brad to “write home to America and tell them that humans come from here in Greece and not Africa.” Brad then turned to me and remarked that it’s hard enough to convince a lot of Americans that we’re descended from primates in the first place. I guess he has a good point there; although I’m skeptical of the whole “oldest man in the world” thing, they do seem to believe in evolution here.
Anyway, the caves were just spectacular, with stalactites and stalagmites everywhere, ranging from monstrously huge to tiny; in fact, the ceiling of one room was covered in stalactites (or stalagmites, whichever is on the ceiling) so tiny that it looked kind of like the ceiling was growing hair. There were lots of eerie-looking nooks and crannies, winding passageways and gorgeous rock formations. It brought to mind several scenes from the Harry Potter books. Unfortunately, photography was not allowed, although my camera was burning a hole in my pocket. If any of my anthro major/prehistory enthusiast friends are reading this, I apologize for the vagueness of my information here. Unfortunately, the tour was in Greek, and although my Greek is improving, anthropological vocabulary is still not my strong point. (Although did you know that the word ‘anthropology’ comes from the Greek ‘anthropi’, for ‘people’?) I do plan to do some investigating of my own, though, probably in the form of typing “Petralona Caves” into google. I’m still not sure whether the skeleton found was 1 million years old or 500,000, whether he was a Neanderthal or something else, whether he was actually a he and not a she, etc. I’m also not sure if the man we met was the famous anthropologist or just some guy who happens to agree with him. Basically, I don’t know anything except that those caves were pretty fantastic.