His first name commemorates an ancestor, John Endicott, who was the state's first colonial governor.

ECONOMIST: Endicott Peabody

The abacus is one of the first mechanical counting devices, an ancient ancestor of today's computers.

FORBES

The common ancestor is, however, too recent for the new species to be a remnant of the first human excursion from Africa, the one that led to Java man and Peking man, now known as Homo erectus.

ECONOMIST: A new species of human