• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Homo erectus

Last of the Homo erectus were wiped out by climate change in a 'mass death event' just 110,000 years ago - almost 300,000 years LATER than previously thought

Source: dailymail.co.uk
Date: 18 December, 2019

Homo erectus, a direct ancestor of modern humans and the first species to walk fully upright, survived 300,000 years longer than previously thought, scientists claim.

A small group of the extinct humanoid species made its last stand on the island of Java in Indonesia about 110,000 years ago, according to new research.

An international team of researchers led by the University of Iowa have been studying an area around the village of Ngangdong on the island.

The experts now believe Homo erectus, which walked upright like us, was the first ancient human to leave Africa and maybe the first to have cooked, was wiped out by climate change.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...s_mchannel=rss&ico=taboola_feed_amp_tvshowbiz
 
New research has finally established a latest known timeframe during which Homo erectus lived, based on evidence associated with some of the earliest H. erectus discoveries in Java. The estimated latest Homo erectus presence was circa 108,000 - 117,000 years ago. This would be prior to the arrival of modern humans in Java (so far as is known or believed to date).
New Evidence Shows These Human Ancestors Mysteriously Died Out 117,000 Years Ago

In the early 1930s, Dutch anthropologists found a giant bed of bones hidden above the banks of the Solo river on the Indonesian island of Java.

More than 25,000 fossil specimens were buried in the river mud in an area called Ngandong, including 12 skull caps and two leg bones from a particularly intriguing human ancestor: Homo erectus.

This species of early human persisted for nearly 2 million years and spread far across parts of Africa and Asia. But scientists had been unable to identify when the last of them died out.

Efforts to determine the exact age of the Java fossils didn't help much, since that gave a broad range of options: Their time of death was estimated to be somewhere between 550,000 and 27,000 years ago.

But a study published today in the journal Nature has put questions about the fate of the last H. erectus to rest.

By dating the surrounding river sediment, rather than the fossils themselves, anthropologists were able to identify a much tighter age range for these skulls. The results showed that the H. erectus individuals perished in a mass death between 117,000 and 108,000 years ago.

That means the bones represent the last known appearance of H. erectus in the archaeological record.

The new timeline helps solve other puzzles as well, since it enables anthropologists to identify other ancient human species that H. erectus overlapped with – and those it didn't. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/this-human-ancestor-suffered-a-mysterious-mass-death-170-000-years-ago

See Also:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191218153527.htm
 
And they arrived later.

Homo erectus reached the Indonesian island of Java some 300,000 years later than many researchers have assumed, a new study finds.

Analyzing volcanic material from sediment that had yielded H. erectus fossils at Java’s Sangiran site shows that the extinct, humanlike hominids likely arrived on the island around 1.3 million years ago, scientists report in the Jan. 10 Science.

More than 100 H. erectus fossils have been found at Sangiran since 1936, many by local residents. For around the last 20 years, many researchers have accepted Sangiran sediment dates — based on analyses of the rate of decay of radioactive argon in volcanic rocks — that put H. erectus on the island from about 1.7 million until 1 million years ago. Others have disputed that timeline, saying the best evidence points to an H. erectus presence at Sangiran from between 1.3 million and 1.1 million years ago until roughly 600,000 years ago.

The new study supports that younger timeline. Researchers, led by paleoanthropologist Shuji Matsu’ura of the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tsukuba City, Japan, analyzed volcanic mineral grains, or zircons, from above, below and within sediment layers where H. erectus fossils had been found. One approach gauged the time since zircons had crystallized, and the other estimated the time since a volcanic eruption deposited zircons at Sangiran.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/homo-erectus-came-indonesia-300000-years-later-than-once-thought
 
HE was the sharpest tool in the box.

Homo erectus, a possible direct ancestor of people today, crafted a surprisingly cutting-edge tool out of a hippo’s leg bone around 1.4 million years ago, researchers say.

This find is a rare example of an ancient type of hand ax made out of bone rather than stone, reports a team led by paleoanthropologists Katsuhiro Sano of Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, and Gen Suwa of the University of Tokyo. The tool was discovered at Ethiopia’s Konso-Gardula site (SN: 1/2/93), which has produced stone tools and fossils attributed to H. erectus.

Along with a variety of stone tools now recognized at several East African sites (SN: 3/4/20), the bone hand ax “suggests that Homo erectus technology was more sophisticated and versatile than we had thought,” Suwa says. Taken together, these finds show that, perhaps several hundred thousand years earlier than previously known, the H. erectus toolkit consisted of items requiring a series of precise operations to manufacture, such as stone and bone hand axes, as well as simpler tools that could be made relatively quickly.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/homo-erectus-hand-ax-stone-age-tools
 
Review and deeper analysis of bone tools from Olduvai Gorge suggests Homo erectus invented barbed points up to 800,000 years ago - much earlier than was previously believed. This interpretation is still subject to debate.

HErectus-Barbs.jpg

Homo erectus, not humans, may have invented the barbed bone point

An 800,000-year-old tool may be the oldest known of its kind

A type of bone tool generally thought to have been invented by Stone Age humans got its start among hominids that lived hundreds of thousands of years before Homo sapiens evolved, a new study concludes.

A set of 52 previously excavated but little-studied animal bones from East Africa’s Olduvai Gorge includes the world’s oldest known barbed bone point, an implement probably crafted by now-extinct Homo erectus at least 800,000 years ago, researchers say. Made from a piece of a large animal’s rib, the artifact features three curved barbs and a carved tip, the team reports in the November Journal of Human Evolution.

Among the Olduvai bones, biological anthropologist Michael Pante of Colorado State University in Fort Collins and colleagues identified five other tools from more than 800,000 years ago as probable choppers, hammering tools or hammering platforms.

The previous oldest barbed bone points were from a central African site and dated to around 90,000 years ago (SN: 4/29/95), and were assumed to reflect a toolmaking ingenuity exclusive to Homo sapiens. Those implements include carved rings around the base of the tools where wooden shafts were presumably attached. Barbed bone points found at H. sapiens sites were likely used to catch fish and perhaps to hunt large land prey. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/homo-erectus-not-humans-invented-barbed-bone-point-tool
 
Here are the bibliographic details and abstract from the published study.

Bone tools from Beds II–IV, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, and implications for the origins and evolution of bone technology
Michael Pante, Ignacio de laTorre, Francesco d’Errico, Jackson Njau, Robert Blumenschine
Journal of Human Evolution
Volume 148, November 2020, 102885
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2020.102885

Abstract
The advent of bone technology in Africa is often associated with behavioral modernity that began sometime in the Middle Stone Age. Yet, small numbers of bone tools are known from Early Pleistocene sites in East and South Africa, complicating our understanding of the evolutionary significance of osseous technologies. These early bone tools vary geographically, with those in South Africa indicating use in foraging activities such as termite extraction and those in East Africa intentionally shaped in a manner similar to lithic tool manufacture, leading some to infer multiple hominin species were responsible for bone technology in these regions, with Paranthropus robustus assumed to be the maker of South African bone tools and Homo erectus responsible for those in East Africa. Here, we present on an assemblage of 52 supposed bone tools primarily from Beds III and IV, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, that was excavated by Mary Leakey in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but was only partially published and was never studied in detail from a taphonomic perspective. The majority of the sites from which the tools were recovered were deposited when only H. erectus is known to have existed in the region, potentially allowing a direct link between this fossil hominin and bone technology. Our analysis confirms at least six bone tools in the assemblage, the majority of which are intentionally flaked large mammal bones. However, one of the tools is a preform of the oldest barbed bone point known to exist anywhere in the world and pushes back the initial appearance of this technology by 700 kyr.

SOURCE: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047248420301469
 
Harpoons are a goodsign of modernity;

Means they are after fish which is a good brain food.

And using bone means they are thinking `what can I do with this?` rather than `oh look, a sharp flint cuts things`
 
Harpoons are a goodsign of modernity;

Means they are after fish which is a good brain food.

And using bone means they are thinking `what can I do with this?` rather than `oh look, a sharp flint cuts things`

Not just fishing - barbs can be used with thrown weapons or arrows. They work because they cause more damage and bleeding. We are still using barbed heads to this day with hunting.
 
Anything wrong with tall and barrel chested?

The descriptions of the Almas seem to be of a tall but burly person
 
Looks a bit startled

I think he's disappointed that his image has slipped somewhat.
For decades people pictured him as like someone from Chariots of Fire, but it turns out he was more like someone from Quest for Fire.
 
Homo erectus and climate change.

A new study published in the journal Science finds that around 1.12 million years ago a massive cooling event in the North Atlantic and corresponding shifts in climate, vegetation and food resources disrupted early human occupation of Europe.

The study published by an international group of scientists from the UK, South Korea and Spain presents observational and modeling evidence documenting that unprecedented climate stress changed the course of early human history.

Archaic humans, known as Homo erectus moved from Africa into central Eurasia around 1.8 million years. From there on they spread towards western Europe, reaching the Iberian peninsula around 1.5 million years ago (Ma).

Experiencing initially rather mild climatic conditions, these groups eventually established a foothold in southern Europe, as documented by several dated fossils and stone tools from this period. But given the increasing intensity of glacial cycles in Europe from 1.2 Ma onwards, it remains unknown for how long early humans lived in this area and whether the occupation was interrupted by worsening climate conditions.

To better understand the environmental conditions, which early human species in Europe experienced, the team of pollen experts, oceanographers, climate modelers, archaeologists, and anthropologists combined data of a deep ocean sediment cores from the eastern subtropical Atlantic with new supercomputer climate model and human habitat model simulations covering the period of the depopulation event.

Video highlighting how paleoclimate evidence shows that around 1.1 million years ago, the southern European climate cooled significantly and likely caused an extinction of early humans on the continent, according to a new study led by UCL researchers. Credit: UCL

Sieving through thousands of small plant pollen stored in the ocean sediment core and analyzing preserved temperature-sensitive organic compounds left by tiny algae, which lived over a million years ago, the scientists discovered that around 1.127 million years ago, the climate over the eastern North Atlantic and the adjacent land suddenly cooled by 7oC.

"This massive cooling marks one of the first terminal stadial events in the paleoclimatic record. It occurred during the last phase of a glacial cycle, when ice-sheets disintegrated, releasing large amounts of freshwater into the ocean, and causing ocean circulation changes and a southward expansion of sea ice," says Prof. Chronis Tzedakis from University College London (UCL), senior author of the study.

The pollen data extracted from the ocean sediment core further add to this scenario "Rivers and winds bring tiny pollen from the adjacent land to the ocean, where they sink and get deposited in the deep ocean. According to our ocean sediment core pollen analysis, the North Atlantic cooling event switched western European vegetation to an inhospitable semi-desert landscape," adds Dr. Vasiliki Margari from UCL, lead author of the study.

To quantify how early humans may have reacted to such an unprecedented climate anomaly, scientists from the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) in South Korea, conducted new computer model simulations for this period. By adding glacial freshwater to the North Atlantic, Dr. Kyung-Sook Yun, and Ms. Hyuna Kim from the ICCP were able to reproduce key features of the terminal stadial event, such as the cooling and drying over southern Europe. ...

https://phys.org/news/2023-08-massive-north-atlantic-cooling-event.html
 
Ravens shared space with homo erectus.

While ravens do not occur in China's capital Beijing today, a new study analyzing fossil bird bones from the UNESCO World Heritage Zhoukoudian "Peking Man" site demonstrates that ravens lived in western Beijing at the same time as some of its famous ancient human inhabitants.

The study of raven fossils by Dr. Thomas A. Stidham and Dr. LI Zhiheng from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Dr. Jingmai O'Connor from the Field Museum of Natural History in the U.S. was published in the Journal of Ornithology on Aug. 27.

The fossil raven bones were excavated many years ago from the cave site known as Locality 3 on Dragon Bone Hill in western Beijing. Those excavated ancient caves from the Pleistocene Epoch distributed across the hill contained thousands of fossils of birds and mammals, including the first fossils of early humans in China, particularly those of "Peking Man" (Homo erectus) and of our species, Homo sapiens.

Ravens have been closely associated with humans for much of our history. These remarkable black birds have been incorporated into our art, literature, and lives. The identification of Pleistocene age raven fossils at one of the classic cave sites on Dragon Bone Hill in Beijing where the original "Peking Man" cave site is located, helps to show that the relationship between ravens and people may have extended far back into prehistory in eastern Asia.

The Northern Raven, also called the Common Raven, is the largest species of songbird (Order Passeriformes) in the world, with a weight of nearly 1.5 kilograms and a wingspan over one meter. It is mostly a scavenger of carrion but also consumes fruits, seeds, and a wide variety of small animals. It is a nonmigratory bird residing across the northern parts of Europe, North America, and Asia.

Nearly 30 years ago, these bird fossils from Beijing, including an upper arm bone (humerus) and a shinbone (tibiotarsus), were placed in their own extinct species under the scientific name Corvus fangshannus. However, they were not compared at that time to the living raven.

https://phys.org/news/2023-09-fossils-ravens-early-humans-beijing.html
 
Some still use them to get out of trees in North Norfolk.

The rotating shoulders and extending elbows that allow humans to reach for a high shelf or toss a ball with friends may have first evolved as a natural braking system for our primate ancestors who simply needed to get out of trees without dying.

Dartmouth researchers report that apes and early humans likely evolved free-moving shoulders and flexible elbows to slow their descent from trees as gravity pulled on their heavier bodies. The paper, "Downclimbing and the evolution of ape forelimb morphologies," is published in Royal Society Open Science.

When early humans left forests for the grassy savanna, the researchers say, their versatile appendages were essential for gathering food and deploying tools for hunting and defense.

The researchers used sports-analysis and statistical software to compare videos and still-frames they took of chimpanzees and small monkeys called mangabeys climbing in the wild.

They found that chimps and mangabeys scaled trees similarly, with shoulders and elbows mostly bent close to the body. When climbing down, however, chimpanzees extended their arms above their heads to hold onto branches like a person going down a ladder as their greater weight pulled them downward rump-first.

Luke Fannin, first author of the study and a graduate student in Dartmouth's Ecology, Evolution, Environment and Society program, said the findings are among the first to identify the significance of "downclimbing" in the evolution of apes and early humans, which are more genetically related to each other than to monkeys.

https://phys.org/news/2023-09-human-shoulders-elbows-evolved-climbing.html
 
Little Garba was a Homo erectus child

An international team of geoscientists, archaeologists and anthropologists has found evidence that strongly suggests an infant jawbone found in the Ethiopian highlands came from a Homo erectus child. In their study, reported in the journal Science, the group conducted multiple tests to learn the true nature of the fossil.

The jawbone was first uncovered back in 1981 at the Garba IV dig site in the Ethiopian highlands by a different team of researchers—it was subsequently nicknamed Little Garba. Over the years, several groups have tested the fossil to learn the species of the individual. No clear consensus was established, but it was found to be a member of the genus Homo.

To pinpoint the species, the researchers on this new effort applied synchrotron imaging to the teeth and compared those images with those of other hominin species. This showed the closest match to be Homo erectus.

Prior research had shown that the layers of sediment in which the jawbone was found were approximately 2 million years old, suggesting that Little Garba lived approximately 2 million years ago, making the jawbone one of the oldest known Homo erectus fossils ever found.

The research team then turned their attention to the stone tools found at the same level at the dig site. They found what they describe as a transition from Oldowan tools to Acheulean tools, which were more advanced. Prior research had shown that such tools were developed approximately 2 million years ago, coinciding with the age of Little Garba.

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-reexamination-ancient-jawbone-ethiopia-homo.html
 
Back
Top