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Homo erectus (/ ˌ h oʊ m oʊ ə ˈ r ɛ k t ə s / lit. ' upright man ') is an extinct species of archaic human from the Pleistocene, spanning nearly 2 million years.It is the first human species to evolve a humanlike body plan and gait, to leave Africa and colonize Asia and Europe, and to wield fire.
Multiple sites in Europe, such as Torralba and Ambrona, Spain, and St. Esteve-Janson, France, have also shown evidence of the use of fire by later versions of H. erectus. The oldest has been found in England at the site of Beeches Pit, Suffolk; uranium series dating and thermoluminescence dating place the use of fire at 415,000 BP. [32]
The first member of the genus Homo to be hairless was Homo erectus, originating about 1.6 million years ago. [6] The dissipation of body heat remains the most widely accepted evolutionary explanation for the loss of body hair in early members of the genus Homo, the surviving member of which is modern humans.
Homo (from Latin homō 'human') is a genus of great ape (family Hominidae) that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses only a single extant species, Homo sapiens (modern humans), along with a number of extinct species (collectively called archaic humans) classified as either ancestral or closely related to modern humans; these include Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis.
From its earliest appearance at about 1.9 Ma, H. erectus is distributed in East Africa and Southwest Asia (Homo georgicus). H. erectus is the first known species to develop control of fire, by about 1.5 Ma. H. erectus later migrates throughout Eurasia, reaching Southeast Asia by 0.7 Ma.
Homo heidelbergensis – lived between 600,000 and 400,000 years ago and used stone tool technology similar to the Acheulean tools used by Homo erectus. [9] Control of fire by early humans – European and Asian sites dating back 1.5 million years ago seem to indicate controlled use of fire by H. erectus.
The extinct species Homo floresiensis has long puzzled experts. A new analysis offers clues to the mystery of this tiny oddball’s place on the human family tree.
Java Man (Homo erectus erectus, formerly also Anthropopithecus erectus or Pithecanthropus erectus) is an early human fossil discovered in 1891 and 1892 on the island of Java (Indonesia). Estimated to be between 700,000 and 1,490,000 years old, it was, at the time of its discovery, the oldest hominid fossil ever found, and it remains the type ...