Without further research it is impossible to know if the town is named after Christopher Columbus or the goddess Columbia. How the District of Columbia gots its name. On the first map of the city of Washington by federal city planner Pierre L'Enfant it was called the Permanent Seat of the Government.
Other scientists have argued that human beings originated in Africa before moving to other regions 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. Homo sapiens discovered in Middle Awash, Ethiopia, from 160,000 years ago were believed to be the oldest 'modern' human beings.Other remains previously found in Israeli caves are thought to have been more recent and 80,000 to 100,000 years old.he findings of Professor Avi Gopher and Dr Ran Barkai of the Institute of Archeology at Tel Aviv University, published last week in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, suggest that modern man did not originate in Africa as previously believed, but in the Middle East.
Now the earliest modern human fossil ever found outside the continent of Africa is pushing back the date for when our ancestors left Africa. The fossil, an upper left jawbone with most of the teeth attached, comes from Misliya Cave in Israel and dates to 177,000-194,000 years ago. This is considerably older than any other remains from our own species, Homo sapiens, ever discovered outside of Africa, and it coincides with several other recent studies that are changing the view on our evolutionary origins and migration throughout the Old World.