Make way for the farmers --

So here we are in the Mesolithic Age, approximately 6350 years BP (before the present). Archaeologists and anthropologists know a fair amount about this time, based on excavations of burial sites, carbon dating, DNA testing, analyzing the artifacts buried with the people, and so on. A museum in the Netherlands has recreated a European Mesolithic hut, in which our distant ancestors might have lived: Photo: Hans Splinter These people not only hunted but fished as well, setting up traps to capture large numbers of fish. And they loved shellfish, if the number of shells in their trash heaps is any indication. (Wouldn't it be fun to be an anthropologist and have your job consist of going through the trash of people who lived thousands of years ago? It sounds pretty interesting to me -- ) When a burial place is discovered, the researchers very carefully remove the dirt and uncover the skeletons, and they find and catalog every little piece of something they find. Here