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ABC News
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Is it OK to shame the Coldplay kiss cam couple?
Sam Hawley: If you hadn't realised by now that cameras are everywhere, so-called Coldplay-gate is a great reminder. And the Kisscam vision of a canoodling couple at the concert, who are apparently having an affair, is proof again how quickly word can travel on social media. Saying it went viral is an understatement. Today, political scientists from Loyola University in Chicago, Jennifer Forstall, on public shaming and when it can sometimes be a good thing. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Jennifer, we better start with a little recap from the Coldplay concert last week in Boston. I think at this point we all feel like we were there. Jennifer Forestal: Right, yeah. Social media will do that. Sam Hawley: Yes, exactly. It's got a fair bit of attention. So it was during this concert that Chris Martin, Coldplay's frontman, announced that he would be singing to a select few people in the crowd using cameras to say hello to members of the audience. Just tell me what happened after that. Jennifer Forestal: Right. So as I understand it, the Kisscam, as it's often called, is sort of going through the crowd, catching couples. Chris Martin, Coldplay lead singer: We'd like to say hello to some of you in the crowd. How we're going to do that is we're going to use our cameras and put some of you on the big screen. Jennifer Forestal: And it happened upon a couple that was embracing and then very quickly realized the camera was on them and turned away, you know, ducked under the cover. Chris Martin, Coldplay lead singer: All right, come on, you're OK? Uh-oh, what? Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy. Jennifer Forestal: And it turned out that he was absolutely right. Sam Hawley: Yeah, what a moment. OK, then the identities, of course, of this couple in the vision is confirmed as Andy Byron, who's a married chief executive of a tech company called Astronomer and Kristen Cabot, the company's chief people officer, who, by the way, is not his wife. And things haven't been going so well for them since then, have they? Jennifer Forestal: That's right. I think Andy Byron was put on leave. I think maybe actually they both were put on leave pending investigation by the company. And then we've quickly found out that Andy Byron submitted his resignation, which was accepted. News report: Astronomer said in a statement that Andy Byron had tended his resignation and the board of directors have accepted that resignation. This clip went viral. Jennifer Forestal: I think the jury is still out on what's happening with Kristen Cabot. I believe she's still employed with the company right now, but we'll see what happens there as well. Sam Hawley: Yeah, and of course, this vision, it has been beamed around the world. The original footage was taken by a TikTok user known as Instaagrace. And that vision that she posted has been viewed 124 million times. It's pretty extraordinary. Jennifer Forestal: It really is. I think it speaks to just the kind of virality that we can see on these technologies these days. Part of it is just kind of the, it's salacious. The way that we all kind of like to watch disasters unfold in front of us. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that there's a kind of turn against sort of CEOs and wealthy elites more generally. So it feels kind of nice to see them sort of, see their life get ruined in front of our eyes. But at the end of the day, really, I think it's just another example of the sort of strife and effect, right? That if they hadn't done anything, if they would have just stayed sort of embracing and sort of waved at the camera, we wouldn't have thought twice about it. But it's the fact that they sort of reacted the way that they did that called attention to the fact that they were perhaps doing something wrong, which, again, if they would have just, you know, hugged each other and moved on, the camera would have gone to the next person. Chris Martin wouldn't have said anything. And we wouldn't be talking about this today. Sam Hawley: And the memes, you know, there's so many of them going around. They're calling it Coldplaygate. Jennifer Forestal: You know, they just kind of all are all over the place and they're all very funny. And I think some of what I think is so striking about this is that, to me, has been picked up in this kind of very funny way where it's not necessarily attacking the people involved, but it's kind of making light of the general situation and putting other people in that kind of circumstances rather than sort of going after the two people that were involved directly. Sam Hawley: The woman who posted this on TikTok, Grace Springer, she told The Sun newspaper that part of her feels bad for turning these people's lives upside down. But she says, play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. But she also said on TikTok that she's glad people are entertained, but she's really urged them to keep in mind the CEO's wife and his family. Grace Springer, TikTok user: But at the end of the day, Andy's wife and his family, they're very real people. So just keep that in mind. Jennifer Forestal: Yeah, of course. And I mean, you know, I've seen this is sort of a topic of debate, especially in this particular instance of public shaming or cancel culture, whatever you want to call it, is that these this particular instance happened in a public forum. You know, kiss cams are not necessarily an unusual invasion of privacy. They've been around for decades or pretty familiar to anybody who's been to a sporting event or a rock show or anything like that. So, you know, there's some argument to the point that's like, you know, if you are going to show up in a concert of 60,000 people, you know, don't expect to see privacy. It's not like they were filmed in their privacy of their own home or in a place that you might expect to get some sort of privacy. On the other hand, you know, it is sort of pointing out the just general surveillance state that we all live under these days, right? That anything can go viral, anything can be filmed by anybody else and uploaded to social media where it could get picked up and viewed by millions. And so I think there's a lot to consider. You know, it's not necessarily a straightforward, you know, they did something wrong and they should pay or they're completely victims in the situation. I just it's I just think it's complicated. Sam Hawley: Well, Jennifer, let's just unpack this a bit more, because as you say, it is actually rather complicated. This is basically public shaming, isn't it? It is. Just explain that a bit more. Jennifer Forestal: Yeah. So public shaming is oftentimes a general term that we use when people have violated some sort of social norm and are sort of publicly shamed, meaning they're like put through the ringer publicly. People sort of admonish them for doing this, whatever sort of violation it is. And so, you know, in a lot of ways, oftentimes when we think about public shaming in a digital age, it's called cancel culture. We think of things like going viral on Twitter, people being racist and things like that. And so what we're seeing here is in some ways an example of public shaming in the sense that this is a couple who have violated a norm of monogamy, presumably, and are sort of being publicly rebuked for going outside of the standard modes of behavior. And so people are sort of taking them to task and ridiculing them for that norm violation. And so, you know, some people would say that this is a violation of their privacy, that this is an overreaction or an inappropriate public reaction. And others would say, you know, it's exactly what they deserve for violating a social norm of monogamy. Sam Hawley: But Byron, he's hardly Jeffrey Epstein, right? Or Harvey Weinstein. He's just some guy who's gone to a concert. And people have deemed that he's behaved badly, but it seems pretty over the top, the amount of interest in him. Jennifer Forestal: Yeah, this is oftentimes one of the criticisms that we see of online public shaming in particular, right? That the scale of social media, the fact that so many people can jump on something so small, the fact that things can go public that wouldn't ordinarily be public, that this is a kind of violation or a kind of pathology of public shaming, that it's no longer working the way we might have in the past intended it to, where people, you know, broke a rule, were shamed for it, they changed their behavior and were welcomed back into the fold. And so, yeah, a lot of people would say this is the problem with cancel culture is that it incentivizes these overreactions, that their mob rule kind of goes unchecked, that there's no accountability for people who shame. And so they kind of, you know, go after people with no real seeming concern about what they might be doing to the victim of public shaming. And, you know, there's a lot to be said for that argument. I think that that is right in a lot of ways. I don't, you know, I think that there is a role for public shaming in public life. And I think it's worth thinking about sort of what is going on in cases of online public shaming, where the scale, the accountability mechanisms are maybe missing to make it valuable. Sam Hawley: Mm, all right. So you believe that public shaming is not bad in all cases. So just give me some examples when in fact it has led to good. Jennifer Forestal: So there are some violations that we, you know, wouldn't want to see people engage in, but we don't want the state to be involved in either. Right. So we don't want people to, for example, lie to their friends, but we also don't want them to be punished, like by jail if they are. In order to make sure that people keep their promises, we would publicly shame the people that don't. And then they would understand that that's a problem. Other people watching the public shaming would understand that they too would be shamed if they lie to their friends. And so we would presumably establish the social norm of not doing that. Other things that are very good candidates for public shaming are things where the state won't, for whatever reason, get involved. So there's a great book by a woman named Jennifer Jacquet about how public shaming has really been effective to use for shaming companies or corporations. So companies are oftentimes outside. They're sometimes not regulated maybe to the extent that people would want. And so public shaming campaigns can oftentimes get corporations to act in ways that people would like to see them act without necessarily getting the state involved in regulating them. Sam Hawley: Well, we do live in a world, Jennifer, where it can take a very long time to build up a reputation, but a moment to lose it. Do you think there is actually a lesson in all of this for us? Jennifer Forestal: I think that there's probably a few lessons, maybe not all of which are actionable. You know, the first is that there's a kind of a pragmatic warning in this, which is, you know, for better or worse, people are watching you in public spaces and you can get filmed doing whatever you do. And so people should probably be aware of that. Again, I'm not sure that that's necessarily a good thing or the kind of world that we want to live in, but it is the world that we do live in. And so it's important that people just, you know, remember that when they go about their daily business. More sort of philosophically, I think that it's important to when we think about public shaming and when we think about people going viral, it is also important to remember that those are real people. You know, what seems to one person to just be a kind of joke that they throw off into a tweet doesn't matter as much from that perspective. But from the perspective of the butt of the joke, it's 100,000 mean comments or 100,000 jokes at your expense. And that can oftentimes do more damage than I think we tend to think about when it's just us writing our individual response. Also thinking about ourselves in terms of the sort of collectives that we are in online. Social media platforms are oftentimes not designed to help us think about ourselves as part of communities or collectives, but we are. And so I think, again, thinking a little bit more about our online presence as part of communities rather than as individual or isolated actions is also something to keep in mind as well. Sam Hawley: What do you think? Do you think this couple deserved the level of public shaming that they were exposed to? Jennifer Forestal: You know, I don't. I don't. Probably not. No. But I will say this. It was striking to me as someone who's been thinking about this for a while that I actually don't think that Andy Byron got the same level of kind of vitriolic response that other victims of public shaming have. So if you think about high profile cases of public shaming in the past, people like Justine Sacco, who had the kind of racist South Africa tweet, or Amy Cooper, who had an altercation with a Black man in Central Park a few years ago, that these women in particular were dragged through the mud. They wereâ€'death threats were sent to them. They faced all sorts of personal attacks in a way that I have not heard is true of Andy Byron. So there, I think, is also an important thing to consider here in terms of gender, which is how your social position can sometimes insulate you from the effects of public shaming and what kinds of people are oftentimes more vulnerable to these kinds of situations. And so while I wouldn't say that anyone is sort of deserving of this kind of attack, especially individuals like that, I also am sort of aware and cognizant of the fact that different people in different social positions sort of react to or have a different response to that kind of situation. Sam Hawley: And also, I guess, the lesson, the big one, is if you don't want to be seen with someone at a big public event, perhaps don't go to that event with that person. Jennifer Forestal: Yeah, or again, maybe just play it cool. If you're caught doing something that you don't want people to react to, don't react to it yourself. Sam Hawley: Yeah, the poker face would have gone a long way. Jennifer, thank you so much. Jennifer Forestal: Of course. Thank you for having me. Sam Hawley: Jennifer Forstall is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Loyola University in Chicago. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.
USA Today
02-07-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
She has dreams of playing for the USA at the Paralympics, but first the U.S. Adaptive Open
Don't be surprised if Meredith Dwyer is competing for Team USA at the Paralympics in 2028. That's her next goal. And while the 30-year-old from Teaneck hasn't been an amputee for very long, she has plenty of experience living up to her own high expectations. Dwyer is one of three New Jersey residents who qualified for the fourth U.S. Adaptive Open Championship, which starts July 7 at Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, Maryland. She was the female medalist at the April 23 qualifier at Haworth Country Club. Brandon Canesi, a 33-year-old from Northfield who was born without hands, finished second on the fourth playoff hole to earn his spot in the 96-player field, which includes individuals with physical and intellectual disabilities. Tyler Cashman, a legally blind 22-year-old from Oldwick, is back for another Adaptive Open after finishing second among visually impaired competitors last summer. Dwyer was a three-sport athlete at Academy of the Holy Angels in Demarest, despite being born with a left clubfoot. When her parents, Jim and Joan Dwyer, first met the exuberant toddler at an orphanage in Novgorod, Russia, Jim Dwyer recalled her "running out with this clubfoot and a big smile on her face, jumping over the toys that are there. We fell in love with her." A lifetime playing through pain For years, Meredith walked on the side of her twisted left foot. She had her first surgery at 18 months old. But it didn't correct the problem, so Dwyer dealt with constant pain. She tried braces and orthotics during childhood, but didn't want to be held back. Dwyer just wanted to play sports like any other kid. She played soccer, basketball, tennis and golf while growing up in Teaneck. She earned a spot on the tennis team at Loyola University in Maryland and played for two years. She had her first reconstructive foot surgery in 2016, between graduating from college and starting a master's in social work program at NYU. That started a cycle Dwyer would rather forget. "You're in pain, then you're recovering, then you're rehabbing, then you're ready for the next surgery," said Dwyer, who had the labrum in her right hip repaired twice. She then had another procedure to shave down bones in her foot to try to ease her pain, and finally, in 2020, surgery to fix hip dysplasia. In 2022, Dwyer was living in Santa Barbara, California, and working as a project manager for Amazon Alexa's sports team. She returned to the golf course, and also tried beach volleyball and surfing. Dwyer stepped in a pothole while hiking with her dog and hurt her clubfoot again. After another major surgery, she wasn't healing well. "I couldn't walk two blocks. I had to drive everywhere. I couldn't go to the beach." She recalled thinking, "Is this how I have to live my life? ... Right then, my priority was, 'I don't want to be in pain anymore.'" After meeting with specialists at hospitals around the country, Dwyer moved back to New Jersey and elected to amputate her left foot in October 2023. "I made a decision, but for me, there was no decision. I did everything I could, and this was the last thing left," said Dwyer, who nicknamed her stump "Lefty." "It was surreal to go through it. It's part of me, but I can talk about, 'Lefty is sore. Lefty's in pain.' It helped me heal mentally and cognitively with the process. ... It's not what I planned, but I'm really happy with how it turned out." Dwyer isn't shy about showing Lefty off, even if she's spotted people staring or even taking photos on the street. Her prosthesis is metal with no skin-like covering, and she often chooses to wear skirts instead of pants. More: NJ bill would make insurers cover artificial limbs for athletes. But some feel left out According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly one in four Americans is living with a disability, about 14% of which impact mobility. Nearly half of those adults with disabilities get no aerobic physical activity. "I want to own this and be proud of who I am," said Dwyer, who admitted that seeing herself in the mirror without her prosthesis is still sometimes shocking. "I want to show the world what an amputee can do, the quality of life we have. It doesn't hold us back." Championship dreams reborn Dwyer did post-surgery rehab and physical therapy with an eye toward returning to competitive sports. She joined the Navigators Adaptive Sports Club, trying track and field for the first time. Dwyer received a grant from the Challenged Athletes Foundation to buy a running blade and competed for the first time in May. But she discovered she prefers shot put and discus to the track. Dwyer joined CrossFit to build more strength and power. Recent physical therapy sessions have focused on hip rotation and improving her core strength. "She achieves one goal and she's on to the next one," said Giancarlo Rozon, who works with Dwyer at Edge Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine in Paramus. "She's very driven to keep getting better, which is very inspirational. It's one achievement after the other. I can't even keep up with her." Dwyer has already achieved her goal of qualifying for the Adaptive Open. Next up is improving her game enough to be in the top five female adaptive golfers – and to compete in tournaments alongside non-amputees. The 2028 Paralympics in Los Angeles are also a distant dream, but Dwyer would compete in the throwing sports, since adaptive golf isn't on the program. As a front-post golfer, Dwyer has had to adjust her swing to put more weight on her prosthesis. But she's still got solid distance on her drives. She is working on her short game: wedges and putting. She's also focusing on "trying to stay in the moment" and being more relaxed as she goes around the course, according to Daniel Hammer, the teaching pro at Newton Country Club – and another below-knee amputee. Dwyer, who lives with her boyfriend, Brett Gray, in Hackensack, is currently No. 2 in the G2 classification on the USGA rankings, behind one of her mentors, Nancy Lee from New York City. "We went from zero to 100 real quick. This has just exploded," she said. "I have that drive. I always want to be first. ... It's still so new, but I'm an athlete. I want to keep competing."
Chicago Tribune
29-06-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Sharp drop in arrests, other long-term crime trends shown in new Cook County data dashboard
Throughout 2019, Chicago police officers made nearly 80,000 arrests before scaling them back significantly during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the following spring. Now five years later, that drop appears not to be just a COVID-era blip: In recent years, arrests have rebounded slightly, but annually police still are recording tens of thousands of fewer arrests than they did in 2019. The trend is among a number of long-term shifts in how the criminal justice system operates in Cook County, according to Loyola University researchers who in partnership with local officials produced a data project that seeks to shed light on how 'shocks to the system' like the pandemic have reshaped how crime and violence are handled in Chicago. The publicly available data dashboard, unveiled by officials on Tuesday, integrates information from police, the court system, jails and prisons with the goal of creating a fuller picture of how cases move through the system from start to finish. It's funded by the MacArthur Foundation's Safety and Justice Challenge and was developed in conjunction with Loyola University Chicago by David Olson and Don Stemen, co-directors of Loyola's Center for Criminal Justice. 'It's a strategic tool to be able to note big trends and for the county stakeholders to use internally in terms of how we talk to each other about overall trends and strategies,' said Ali Abid, deputy director of the Cook County Justice Advisory Council, adding that officials felt it was important to make it available to the public and the media as well. The dashboard comes at a time when the justice system is still adjusting to major changes, like the elimination of cash bail in 2023 in addition to the massive upheaval brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The system is also experiencing new shifts that may continue to transform how justice looks in Cook County, such as the shuttering of the electronic monitoring program run by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and the policy changes brought by State's Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke since she took office in December. 'What we've been seeing for a decade is a shift in thinking about how we respond to crime,' said Olson. Olson said Cook County is the only large county he is aware of with a data system like this one. He noted that it is not designed to explain why changes are happening but rather help stakeholders spot patterns. 'Part of it is to illustrate the interconnectedness of the system despite the fact that agencies are at different levels of government, different branches of government,' he said. Even though, according to the dashboard, arrests have declined since the pandemic — with police in total making more than 47,000 arrests in 2024 compared with more than 78,000 in 2019 — the researchers noted that incidents reported to police have not seen the same sustained sharp decrease, an indication that police practices may be shifting. '(Arrests have) gone up a little bit since 2020 but certainly are not back to the levels that you saw before COVID,' Stemen said. In particular, drug arrests have declined significantly. 'I don't think anyone would interpret this as a 60% drop in drug use in Chicago, but a change in policing habits,' Olson said. And among those who are charged with a drug offense, a greater share of those people are being sentenced to probation, according to the researchers. 'The use of prison has gone down,' Olson said, as a reliance on diversion and community supervision has grown. Meanwhile, arrests for weapons offenses have risen in recent years, according to the dashboard, with more than 5,300 made in 2024 versus around 4,600 in 2019. So far this year, the dashboard has also tracked a rise in the jail population, as well as an increase in people being ordered detained by judges while their cases are pending, though Olson and Stemen cautioned that the 2025 data so far makes up a small sample of the total data. The Tribune earlier this year reported on a recent uptick in the population of Cook County Jail, as officials examined possible factors such as the new state's attorney's policy-making and judicial decisions. 'It's at least on a trend where it seems like it will continue to increase for a while, but at a certain point it should plateau,' Olson said.
CBS News
22-06-2025
- CBS News
Baltimore man sentenced to life for killing Jamal Barney, former Loyola basketball player
A Baltimore man was sentenced to life on Friday for brutally murdering former Loyola Basketball player Jamal Barney in October 2023. Dayrel McFarland will be serving a life sentence plus three years for First-Degree Murder and Deadly Weapon with Intent to Injure, according to the Office of the State's Attorney for Baltimore City. Jamal Barney, a standout Loyola basketball player Jamal Barney was a Baltimore native who attended Southwestern High School and went to Providence before transferring to Loyola University. It was at Loyola, from 2008 to 2011, that he became the Greyhounds' leading scorer in the two seasons he played, scoring 1,000 career points with two 40-point games. "Barney was from Southwestern High School and was one of the best scorers in the country," former Loyola basketball coach Jimmy Patsos said. Missing investigation Police say Barney, who was 37 years old at the time, was missing on October 1. However, family members reported that they hadn't seen or heard from him for nine days, had already filed a missing persons report, and had circulated flyers online. The family later received an anonymous message claiming that McFarland, also known as "Little D," had bashed Barney in the head with a cinder block and hid his body in a vacant home. A day later, on October 2, police responded to the 500 block of North Payson Street for reports of a suspicious death. When they entered the home, officers immediately detected a strong foul odor, according to the press release. In a second-floor bedroom, they found the body of Barney, stuffed inside a mattress covered with blankets and clothing. The body was reportedly mummified and so decomposed that the gender and race of the victim couldn't be determined, nor could a trace of blood or trauma be found. Officials believe the decomposition was accelerated by the body being stuffed inside the mattress. Investigators later observed a large hole in the right side of the bedroom wall leading to two adjoining rooms where they found blood evidence and splatter on the walls. A small section of carpet was also stained with blood, along with cinder blocks and a concrete paver. Tattoos helped identify unrecognizable body The body was later identified through Barney's tattoos by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, who ruled the victim's death a homicide by blunt force trauma to the head. McFarland, who was arrested on an outstanding warrant and questioned, initially denied murdering Barney, but admitted to having a roommate. Investigators then found a witness who told police that the defendant admitted to killing Jamal Barney by striking him in the head with the cinder block and hiding his body in a mattress on the second floor of the vacant. DNA testing of a cinderblock stained with blood linked McFarland to the scene of the crime.
Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Humans adapted to diverse habitats before trekking out of Africa
By Will Dunham (Reuters) -Small bands of Homo sapiens made a few failed forays leaving our home continent before the species finally managed to launch a major dispersal out of Africa roughly 50,000 years ago, going first into Europe and Asia and eventually the rest of the world. So why was this migration successful after the prior ones were not? New research is offering insight. It documents how human hunter-gatherers in Africa began about 70,000 years ago to embrace a greater diversity of habitats such as thick forests and arid deserts, acquiring an adaptability useful for tackling the wide range of conditions awaiting beyond the continent. "Why the dispersal 50,000 years ago was successful is a big question in human origins research. Our results suggest that one part of the reason is that humans had developed the ecological flexibility to survive in challenging habitats," said Loyola University Chicago archeologist Emily Hallett, co-leader of the study published in the journal Nature. Looking at an array of archeological sites in Africa, the study detailed how human populations expanded their range into the forests of Central and West Africa and the deserts of North Africa in the roughly 20,000 years preceding this dispersal. Some examples of archeological sites dating to this time that illustrate the expansion of human niches to harsh deserts include locales in Libya and Namibia, and examples of expansion to forested habitats include locales in Malawi and South Africa. Homo sapiens arose roughly 300,000 years ago, inhabiting grasslands, savannahs and various other African ecosystems. "Starting from about 70,000 years ago, we see that they suddenly start to intensify this exploitation of diverse habitats and also expand into new types of habitat in a way we don't see before. They exploit more types of woodland, more types of closed canopy forests, more types of deserts, highlands and grasslands," said archeologist and study co-leader Eleanor Scerri of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany. "An Ice Age was coming, which means drier conditions in parts of Africa. It seems possible that humans responded to this squeeze by learning how to adapt to new niches," Scerri added. The increased ecological flexibility of the species appears to have reflected cultural and social advances such as passing knowledge from one generation to the next and engaging in cooperative behavior, the researchers said. "This must have entailed profound changes in their interaction with the natural environment, as it allowed them to occupy not only new environments in Africa, but entirely new conditions in Eurasia as well," said evolutionary biologist and study co-leader Michela Leonardi of the Natural History Museum in London. "Another way to phrase this is that the ability to live in a variety of environments in Africa is not directly the adaptation that allowed a successful out of Africa, but rather a sign that humans by that point were the ultimate generalist, able to tackle environments that went from deep forest to dry deserts," said University of Cambridge evolutionary ecologist and study co-leader Andrea Manica. "This flexibility is the key trait that allowed them, later on, to conquer novel challenges, all the way to the coldest tundras in Siberia." Trekking out of Africa, Homo sapiens encountered not only new environments and unfamiliar animals and plants, but also other human species, including the Neanderthals and Denisovans. The ecological flexibility learned in Africa may have provided an edge when Homo sapiens encountered these other humans, both of whom disappeared relatively soon thereafter, the researchers said. Genetic evidence indicates that today's people outside of Africa can trace their ancestry to the population of humans, numbering perhaps only in the thousands, who engaged in that pioneering migration out of Africa approximately 50,000 years ago. "I think that adaptability and innovation are hallmarks of our species, and that they allowed us to succeed in every environment we encountered," Hallett said. "At the same time, we are almost too good at adapting to different places, to the detriment of most other species on Earth."
