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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.
Turkana Boy, also called Nariokotome Boy, is the name given to fossil KNM-WT 15000, a nearly complete skeleton of a Homo erectus youth who lived 1.5 to 1.6 million years ago. This specimen is the most complete early hominin skeleton ever found. [ 1 ]
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.
Homo erectus derives from early Homo or late Australopithecus. Homo habilis, although significantly different of anatomy and physiology, is thought to be the ancestor of Homo ergaster, or African Homo erectus; but it is also known to have coexisted with H. erectus for almost half a million years
In Africa in the Early Pleistocene, 1.5–1 Ma, some populations of Homo habilis are thought to have evolved larger brains and to have made more elaborate stone tools; these differences and others are sufficient for anthropologists to classify them as a new species, Homo erectus—in Africa. [71] This species also may have used fire to cook meat.
These sites attest that early Homo erectus have crossed the North African tracts, which are usually hot and dry. [4]: 2 There is little time between Homo erectus' apparent arrival in South Caucasus around 1.8 Ma, and its probable arrival in East and Southeast Asia.
Replica of Homo erectus ("Peking man") skull from China. Xinzhi Wu has argued for a morphological clade in China spanning the Pleistocene, characterized by a combination of 10 features. [47] [48] The sequence is said to start with Lantian and Peking Man, traced to Dali, to Late Pleistocene specimens (e.g. Liujiang) and recent Chinese.
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 ...