Homo Erectus Quotes

CARL SAGAN SAID that if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. When he says “from scratch,” he means from nothing. He means from a time before the world even existed. If you want to make an apple pie from nothing at all, you have to start with the Big Bang and expanding universes, neutrons, ions, atoms, black holes, suns, moons, ocean tides, the Milky Way, Earth, evolution, dinosaurs, extinction- level events, platypuses, Homo erectus, Cro- Magnon man, etc. You have to start at the beginning. You must invent fire. You need water and fertile soil and seeds. You need cows and people to milk them and more people to churn that milk into butter. You need wheat and sugar cane and apple trees. You need chemistry and biology. For a really good apple pie, you need the arts. For an apple pie that can last for generations, you need the printing press and the Industrial Revolution and maybe even a poem.To make a thing as simple as an apple pie, you have to create the whole wide world.

Those Who From Heaven To Earth Came". They landed on Earth, colonized it, mining the Earth for gold and other minerals, establishing a spaceport in what today is the Iraq-Iran area, and lived in a kind of idealistic society as a small colony. They returned when Earth was more populated and genetically interfered in our indigenous DNA to create a slave-race to work their mines, farms, and other enterprises in Sumeria, which was the so-called Cradle of Civilization in out-dated pre-1980s school history texts. They created Man, Homo Sapiens, through genetic manipulation with themselves and ape man Homo Erectus.

Humans in Europe and western Asia evolved into Homo neanderthalensis (‘Man from the Neander Valley’), popularly referred to simply as ‘Neanderthals’. Neanderthals, bulkier and more muscular than us Sapiens, were well adapted to the cold climate of Ice Age western Eurasia. The more eastern regions of Asia were populated by Homo erectus, ‘Upright Man’, who survived there for close to 2 million years, making it the most durable human species ever. This record is unlikely to be broken even by our own species. It is doubtful whether Homo sapiens will still be around a thousand years from now, so 2 million years is really out of our league.

Relatively small changes in genes, hormones and neurons were enough to transform Homo erectus – who could produce nothing more impressive than flint knives – into Homo sapiens, who produce spaceships and computers.

I found myself drawn to biology, with all its frustrating yet fascinating complexities. When I was twelve, I remember reading about axolotls, which are basically a species of salamander that has evolved to remain permanently in the aquatic larval stage. They manage to keep their gills (rather than trading them in for lungs, like salamanders or frogs) by shutting down metamorphosis and becoming sexually mature in the water. I was completely flabbergasted when I read that by simply giving these creatures the “metamorphosis hormone” (thyroid extract) you could make the axolotl revert back into the extinct, land-dwelling, gill-less adult ancestor that it had evolved from. You could go back in time, resurrecting a prehistoric animal that no longer exists anywhere on Earth. I also knew that for some mysterious reason adult salamanders don’t regenerate amputated legs but the tadpoles do. My curiosity took me one step further, to the question of whether an axolotl—which is, after all, an “adult tadpole”—would retain its ability to regenerate a lost leg just as a modern frog tadpole does. And how many other axolotl-like beings exist on Earth, I wondered, that could be restored to their ancestral forms by simply giving them hormones? Could humans—who are after all apes that have evolved to retain many juvenile qualities—be made to revert to an ancestral form, perhaps something resembling Homo erectus, using the appropriate cocktail of hormones? My mind reeled out a stream of questions and speculations, and I was hooked on biology forever. I found mysteries and possibilities everywhere.

So the question of our origins concerns the forces that sprung Homo erectus from their australopithecine past. Anthropologists have an answer. According to the most popular view since the 1950s there was a single supposed impetus: the eating of meat.

Archaic humans like Homo erectus “spread like many other mammals in the Old World,” Pääbo told me. “They never came to Madagascar, never to Australia. Neither did Neanderthals. It’s only fully modern humans who start this thing of venturing out on the ocean where you don’t see land. Part of that is technology, of course; you have to have ships to do it. But there is also, I like to think or say, some madness there. You know? How many people must have sailed out and vanished on the Pacific before you found Easter Island? I mean, it’s ridiculous. And why do you do that? Is it for the glory? For immortality? For curiosity? And now we go to Mars. We never stop.

As long as Homo erectus did not undergo further genetic alterations, its stone tools remained roughly the same – for close to 2 million years!

containing bones and tools of Homo erectus

Those protohumans are generally known as Australopithecus africanus, Homo habilis, and Homo erectus, which apparently evolved into each other in that sequence.

Homo erectus was the first to hunt, the first to use fire, the first to fashion complex tools, the first to leave evidence of campsites, the first to look after the weak and frail.

Homo erectus, ‘Upright Man’, who survived there for close to 2 million years, making it the most durable human species ever.

The famous Java Homo erectus fossils prove that humans have occupied at least western Indonesia for a million years.

The first human ancestor to spread beyond Africa was Homo erectus, as is attested by fossils discovered on the Southeast Asian island of Java and conventionally known as Java man

Two million years ago, genetic mutations resulted in the appearance of a new human species called Homo erectus.

Each human alive enjoys their grammar and society because of the work, the discoveries and the intelligence of Homo erectus.

Since the dawn of time, several billion human (or humanlike) beings have lived, each contributing a little genetic variability to the total human stock. Out of this vast number, the whole of our understanding of human prehistory is based on the remains, often exceedingly fragmentary, of perhaps five thousand individuals. You could fit it all into the back of a pickup truck if you didn't mind how much you jumbled everything up, Ian Tattersall, the bearded and friendly curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, replied when I asked him the size of the total world archive of hominid and early human bones. The shortage wouldn't be so bad if the bones were distributed evenly through time and space, but of course they are not. They appear randomly, often in the most tantalizing fashion. Homo erectus walked the Earth for well over a million years and inhabited territory from the Atlantic edge of Europe to the Pacific side of China, yet if you brought back to life every Homo erectus individual whose existence we can vouch for, they wouldn't fill a school bus. Homo habilis consists of even less: just two partial skeletons and a number of isolated limb bones. Something as short-lived as our own civilization would almost certainly not be known from the fossil record at all. In Europe, Tattersall offers by way of illustration, you've got hominid skulls in Georgia dated to about 1.7 million years ago, but then you have a gap of almost a million years before the next remains turn up in Spain, right on the other side of the continent, and then you've got another 300,000-year gap before you get a Homo heidelbergensis in Germany and none of them looks terribly much like any of the others. He smiled. It's from these kinds of fragmentary pieces that you're trying to work out the histories of entire species. It's quite a tall order. We really have very little idea of the relationships between many ancient species which led to us and which were evolutionary dead ends. Some probably don't deserve to be regarded as separate species at all.

But the fact remains that 2 million years ago in Africa, a Homo erectus community began to share information among its members by means of language. They were the first to say, ‘It’s over there,’ or, ‘I am hungry.’ Maybe the first to say, ‘I love you.

Our probable ancestors, Homo erectus and Homo habilis -now extinct- are classified as of the same genus (Homo) but of different species, although no one (at least lately) has attempted the appropriate experiments to see if crosses of them with us would produce fertile offspring.

Homo erectus, ‘Upright Man’, who survived there for close to 2 million years, making it the most durable human species ever. This record is unlikely to be broken even by our own species. It is doubtful whether Homo sapiens will still be around a thousand years from now, so 2 million years is really out of our league.

Seven skulls vividly convey the long road of human evolution. From left they are: Adapis (50 million years ago), Proconsul (23–15 million years), Australopithecus africanus (3 million years), Homo habilis (2 million years), Homo erectus (1 million years), early Homo sapiens (92,000 years) and Cro-Magnon (20,000 years ago).

E lei ora desidera. È uscito del letargo della sua rassegnata solitudine, ha scoperto la fame del suo cuore, sa che la mela è proibita, ma desidera. Non avrà più pace, né dieta. [...] Soffrirà, il suo cuore, lo stomaco e le viscere andranno in subbuglio, il suo istinto di Homo erectus potrà essere temprato, ma non vinto. La mela è caduta dall'albero del destino.

The more eastern regions of Asia were populated by Homo erectus, ‘Upright Man’, who survived there for close to 2 million years, making it the most durable human species ever. This record is unlikely to be broken even by our own species. It is doubtful whether Homo sapiens will still be around a thousand years from now, so 2 million years is really out of our league.

The more eastern regions of Asia were populated by Homo erectus, 'Upright Man', who survived there for close to 2 million years, making it the most durable human species ever. This record is unlikely to be broken even by our own species. It is doubtful whether Homo sapiens will still be around a thousand years from now, so 2 million years is really out of our league.

Elves are just as human as our Sapien counterparts, just from a different branch of the Homo-Erectus tree.  Where there had been three branches, Homo-Sapien, Homo-Neanderthalensis, and Homo-Aelftus

Neanderthals are human,” said Mary. “We’re congeners; we all belong to the genus Homo. Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo antecessor—if you believe that’s a legitimate species—Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens. We’re all humans.” “I concede the point,” said Krieger, with a nod. “What should we call ourselves to distinguish us from them?” “Homo sapiens sapiens,” said Mary.

litres for Neandertals versus 1.4 for modern people, according to one calculation. This is more than the difference between modern Homo sapiens and late Homo erectus, a species we are happy to regard as barely human. The argument put forward is that although our brains were smaller, they were somehow more efficient. I believe I speak the truth when I observe that nowhere else in human evolution is such an argument made.

Because of the varying conditions in settlement places, humans evolved. Those in Europe and western Asia became Homo neanderthalensis or Neanderthals (man from the Neander Valley). Those in eastern Asia became Homo erectus (upright man). Those on the island of Java in Indonesia became Homo soloensis (man from the Solo valley). Last but not least, those in Flores Island became Homo floresiensis. Of these, Homo erectus survived the longest.

Two million years ago, genetic mutations resulted in the appearance of a new human species called Homo erectus. Its emergence was accompanied by the development of a new stone tool technology, now recognised as a defining feature of this species. As long as Homo erectus did not undergo further genetic alterations, its stone tools remained roughly the same – for close to 2 million years! In contrast, ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have been able to change their behaviour quickly, transmitting new behaviours to future generations without any need of genetic or environmental change.

The contract and the vision was “the world was made for Man and Man was made to conquer and rule it.” This is what we’d been about from the beginning, conquering and ruling, taking the world as if it has been fashioned for our exclusive use…this was not wicked work, this was holy work! This was what God created us to do! And it was not something we learned from Genesis, where God told Adam to fill the earth and subdue it. This is something we knew before Jerusalem, before Babylon…this isn’t something the authors of Genesis taught us, it is something, we, our culture, taught them. This was not the human vision, not the vision that born in us when we became Homo habilis or when Homo habilis became Homo erectus, etc. This is the vision when our culture was born, ten thousand years ago. This was the manifesto of our revolution, to be carried to every corner of the earth.

The Denisovan’s Tale is short, as befits a set of people about whom we know so little. They are named after the Denisova Cave in the Altai mountains of Siberia, and the cave itself is named after Denis, an eighteenth-century resident hermit. Less than a decade ago, few people would have heard of it, let alone known how to pronounce it.* Now it is centre stage in debates surrounding recent human evolution. In 2009 Johannes Krause and Qiaomei Fu attempted to extract DNA from one half of the tip of a 40,000-year-old finger bone, excavated from deep under the cave floor. An archaeologist at the site is reported to have described it as the ‘most unspectacular fossil I’ve ever seen’. What did turn out to be spectacular, however, was both the degree of DNA preservation, and the subsequent overturning of established views. First to be sequenced was the mitochondrial DNA. This was found to be distinct from both Moderns and Neanderthals. It lies on a much deeper branch of the gene tree. A year or so later it was joined by more mitochondrial DNA extracted from two molar teeth in almost the same layer of the Denisova excavations. The teeth were visibly larger than those of Neanderthals, more like molars in Homo erectus or the earlier hominids† that we will greet further along in our pilgrimage. Now that the fingertip has been pulverised for DNA extraction, the two teeth constitute all the tangible evidence we have of the Denisovans. Although what we have described so far is titillating, it is thin evidence for a new human subspecies.

The modern comforts and conveniences that now most influence our daily experience—cars, computers, television, climate control, smartphones, ultraprocessed food, and more—have been used by our species for about 100 years or less. That’s around 0.03 percent of the time we’ve walked the earth. Include all the Homos—habilis, erectus, heidelbergensis, neanderthalensis, and us—and open the time scale to 2.5 million years and the figure drops to 0.004 percent. Constant comfort is a radically new thing for us humans. Over these 2.5 million years, our ancestors’ lives were intimately intertwined with discomfort. These people were constantly exposed to the elements. It was either too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too windy, or too snowy out. The only escape from the weather was a rudimentary

The Tale of Human Evolution The subject most often brought up by advocates of the theory of evolution is the subject of the origin of man. The Darwinist claim holds that modern man evolved from ape-like creatures. During this alleged evolutionary process, which is supposed to have started 4-5 million years ago, some "transitional forms" between modern man and his ancestors are supposed to have existed. According to this completely imaginary scenario, four basic "categories" are listed: 1. Australopithecus 2. Homo habilis 3. Homo erectus 4. Homo sapiens Evolutionists call man's so-called first ape-like ancestors Australopithecus, which means "South African ape." These living beings are actually nothing but an old ape species that has become extinct. Extensive research done on various Australopithecus specimens by two world famous anatomists from England and the USA, namely, Lord Solly Zuckerman and Prof. Charles Oxnard, shows that these apes belonged to an ordinary ape species that became extinct and bore no resemblance to humans. Evolutionists classify the next stage of human evolution as "homo," that is "man." According to their claim, the living beings in the Homo series are more developed than Australopithecus. Evolutionists devise a fanciful evolution scheme by arranging different fossils of these creatures in a particular order. This scheme is imaginary because it has never been proved that there is an evolutionary relation between these different classes. Ernst Mayr, one of the twentieth century's most important evolutionists, contends in his book One Long Argument that "particularly historical [puzzles] such as the origin of life or of Homo sapiens, are extremely difficult and may even resist a final, satisfying explanation." By outlining the link chain as Australopithecus > Homo habilis > Homo erectus > Homo sapiens, evolutionists imply that each of these species is one another's ancestor. However, recent findings of paleoanthropologists have revealed that Australopithecus, Homo habilis, and Homo erectus lived at different parts of the world at the same time. Moreover, a certain segment of humans classified as Homo erectus have lived up until very modern times. Homo sapiens neandarthalensis and Homo sapiens sapiens (modern man) co-existed in the same region. This situation apparently indicates the invalidity of the claim that they are ancestors of one another. Stephen Jay Gould explained this deadlock of the theory of evolution although he was himself one of the leading advocates of evolution in the twentieth century: What has become of our ladder if there are three coexisting lineages of hominids (A. africanus, the robust australopithecines, and H. habilis), none clearly derived from another? Moreover, none of the three display any evolutionary trends during their tenure on earth. Put briefly, the scenario of human evolution, which is "upheld" with the help of various drawings of some "half ape, half human" creatures appearing in the media and course books, that is, frankly, by means of propaganda, is nothing but a tale with no scientific foundation. Lord Solly Zuckerman, one of the most famous and respected scientists in the U.K., who carried out research on this subject for years and studied Australopithecus fossils for 15 years, finally concluded, despite being an evolutionist himself, that there is, in fact, no such family tree branching out from ape-like creatures to man.

As the first humans acquired tools and an appreciation of minimalist cave art, they turned their attention to improving their lives and understanding the cosmos. Homo erectus erected the first blazing fire 500 000 years ago. After burgers went from raw to medium-well, a truly long time elapsed before the next human milestone: the bun. The first planting of grains and other crops, which occurred just 12 000 years ago, ended our million-year low-carb diet and freed us from being hunters. No longer plagued by the frustration of trying to sneak up on animals with bigger ears and faster legs, humans started staying put. Our nomadic days were ending.

The big brain of humans is the true hallmark of humanity, not because it signifies high intelligence, but because it made extreme sociality a prerequisite just to be born. By this thinking, Homo erectus is the first human.

human physical form around 200,000 years ago. Official science is silent on the cause of this and mutters terms like ‘the missing link’. But some unavoidable facts need to be addressed. Suddenly the previous physical form known as homo erectus became what we now call homo sapiens. From the start the new homo sapiens had the ability to speak a complex language and the size of the human brain increased massively. Yet the biologist Thomas Huxley said that major changes like this can take tens of millions of years. This view is supported by the evidence of homo erectus which appears to have emerged in Africa about 1.5 million years ago. For well in excess of a million years their physical form seems to have remained the same, but then, out of nowhere, came the dramatic change to homo sapiens.

Because squatting creates tiny smoothed regions on ankle bones known as squatting facets, we can see that humans for millions of years, including Homo erectus and Neanderthals, regularly squatted.12 Squatting facets also indicate that many Europeans squatted habitually until furniture and stoves became common after the Middle Ages.13

Find your self-limiting beliefs and push out of your comfort zone little by little. As absurd as it sounds, acclimate yourself to occasional discomfort. You will be amazed at what you can do. Don’t confuse your memories with reality. We all are commentators; we all shade out experiences with the hues and tones that bias facts. We look for occurrences that match our own values, but they may not be the values others espouse.Let’s admit it – we have memories that are biased by our own beliefs and values. Speak to yourself positively. If you can learn how to follow your own advice to yourself, you can become mentally tough. We are all too often victimized by our primal mind that speaks to us with poorly worded feelings. Overcome the negativity bias. Since prehistoric times, homo erectus gave rise to homo sapiens, and survived amid ferocious predators. He either fought for his lunch, or he was eaten as lunch.

While there remains some debate, many believe that Homo erectus was the first to use fire, and fire was one of the most important catalysts—if not the most important—that enabled us to come out of the trees and live on terra firma.

The nuchal ligament is useful only for stabilizing the head when an animal is moving fast; if you’re a walker, you don’t need one. Big butts are only necessary for running. (See for yourself: clutch your butt and walk around the room sometime. It’ll stay soft and fleshy, and only tighten up when you start to run. Your butt’s job is to prevent the momentum of your upper body from flipping you onto your face.) Likewise, the Achilles tendon serves no purpose at all in walking, which is why chimps don’t have one. Neither did Australopithecus, our semi-simian four-million-year-old ancestor; evidence of an Achilles tendon only began to appear two million years later, in Homo erectus.

Homo erectus,

Human beings are wired to see situations as being unfair to us.393 As comedian Tim Minchin said in a 2013 commencement speech in Australia: “We didn’t evolve to be constantly content. Contented Homo erectus got eaten before passing on their genes.”394 Oddly, knowing that I have every reason in the world to be freaking out has made me much more relaxed.

At this site, going back at least 790,000 years, there is evidence for Acheulean tools, Levallois tools, evidence of controlled fire, organised village life, huts that housed socially specialised tasks of different kinds and other evidence of culture among Homo erectus. Erectus may have stopped here on the way out of Africa.

Though Olduwan and Acheulean tools overlapped in their use by earlier hominins, Acheulean tools were more advanced. They were carried from Africa to Europe by Homo erectus, with Spain being their earliest European destination, about 900,000 years ago.

Then, 1.8 million years ago, came Homo erectus.

- Ho la testa piccola e denti aguzzi, il mio davanti è snello, ma dietro termino con un gran culone obeso. Sa perchè? - Perchè? - La mia testa è la ragione, la ratio, il cogito, con gli aguzzi denti dell'argomentazione filosofica. Pensare e ripensare mi consuma, mi leviga e la mia testa è affusolata, niente grasso superfluo di luoghi comuni e pigre spiegazioni. Poi però ci sono il cuore, lo stomaco e la pancia. E loro non capiscono la filosofia della parte davanti, si espandono e si allargano in beata assenza di razionalità. Sa cosa faccio quando esco dal letargo? - No, dottor Meles. - Desidero, professore, desidero. Desidero mangiare, divorare, strippare, ingollare, dopo mesi di astinenza. Desidero mele, tuberi, lucertole, bacche, serpi, anche lumache con il guscio se le trovo. Istinto, biologia aggressiva, irrazionale brama, ecco cosa mi guida. Ha un bel pensare la testa, la ragione non conta più nulla. E lei ora desidera. E' uscito dal letargo della sua rassegnata solitudine, ha scoperto la fame del suo cuore, sa che la mela è proibita, ma desidera. Non avrai più pace, né dieta. Non c'è filosofo che possa venirle aiuto, nessun libro, nessuna saggezza. Soffrirà, il suo cuore, lo stomaco e le viscere andranno in subbuglio, il mio istinto di Homo erectus potrà essere temprato, ma non ha vinto. La mela è caduta dall'albero del destino. si prepari.

Contemporary languages are therefore different in their details from those of 2 million years ago. But the fact remains that 2 million years ago in Africa, a Homo erectus community began to share information among its members by means of language. They were the first to say, ‘It’s over there,’ or, ‘I am hungry.’ Maybe the first to say, ‘I love you.

¿Y por qué un Dios pondría un pesado cráneo arriba de una delgada columna de vértebras? ¿Para fatigar al Homo erectus, para hacerle casi imposible el equilibrio? Me lo pregunté desnudo ante un espejo largo. El ruido de la ciudad se colaba en mi estudio por la ventana abierta. ¿Por qué le colocaría entre los dos intestinos un apéndice, que únicamente se hace notar cuando se inflama y debe extirparse? ¿Para enriquecer a los cirujanos? ¿O para qué pondría ojos frontales en el mayor depredador del planeta, y no laterales, con una visión periférica? Ahí estaba yo, un compendio de diseño errado. Otra prueba de la inexistencia de Dios. Como cada forma viva, apenas suficientemente mal construido como para poder sobrevivir.

historia. La ampliación de la niñez incluye no solo una prolongación de la primera infancia, sino también un periodo más largo de infancia intermedia y de adolescencia. Además, la infancia se hizo más larga a medida que los seres humanos evolucionaban. Los primeros homínidos, como el Homo erectus, ya caminaban erguidos, pero no tenían la prolongada infancia

They used my name and permit to grow the weed and earn money to repay their debts and compensate their investors. To keep my girlfriend. To take her. I am uncertain if any of them have ever spent a minute in jail for any of these activities. Adam proudly showcases his new motorcycles on Instagram, posing on a hill above Barcelona. He also displays his brand new electric camper van, which they use to travel and transport drugs across Europe and Iberia, as well as his gigantic marijuana cultivation located in Portugal. People like Ruan and Martina admire his public images. I came across a picture of Ruan and Martina together in Berlin, where their mother Fernanda visited them. Martina became member of the Evil Eye Cult, and the custom made mafia group in Spain, which used her as a pawn in their porn and drug-related activities. She now operates as their representative in Berlin. Martina and I have lost the ability to genuinely smile. Her social media posts only show disinterest or a malicious demeanor. ‘A boot stomping on a human face.’ In a picture with her brother and mother, she puts on a forced fake “good vibe” and “happy” smile, revealing her flawless teeth and the subtle lines of aging. With each passing day, she bears a greater resemblance to her rich and so happy mother, the bad person. As far as I know, none of these individuals have faced consequences for their actions, such as having their teeth broken. As I had. Innocently. Taking care of business and their lives. With love. I find this to be incredibly unjust. In the 21st century. In Europe. On planet Earth. By non-EU criminals. “Matando – ganando” – “killing and gaining” like there were no Laws at all. Nowadays, you can observe Sabrina flaunting her fake lips and altered face, just like Martina her enhanced breasts. Guess who was paying for it? It seems that both girls now sustain themselves through their bodies and drug involvement, to this day, influencing criminals to gain friends in harming Tomas and having a lavish lifestyle filled with fun and mischief. Making a living. Enjoying Spain. Enjoying Life. My money. My tears. This is the situation as it stands. I was wondering what Salvador Dali was trying to tell me. I stood in front of the Lincoln portrait for a long time, but I couldn't grasp the point or the moral behind it. I can listen to Abraham Lincoln and ‘trust people. To see. If I can trust them.’ But he ultimately suffered a tragic fate, with his life being taken. (Got his head popped.) I believe there may have also been a female or two involved in that situation, too, possibly leading to his guards being let down. While he was watching: Acting performances, he was facing a: Stage. Theater. It is disheartening, considering he was a good person. Like Jesus, John Lennon and so on. Shows a pattern Machiavelli was talking about. Some individuals are too bright for those in darkness; they feel compelled to suppress those brighter minds simply because they think and act differently. Popping their heads. Reptilian lower brain-based culture, the concept of the Evil Eye, Homo erectus. He couldn't even stand up properly when I was shouting at him, urging him to stand up from the stairs. ‘Homo seditus reptilis.’ But what else was there in the Lincoln image that I didn't see? What was Dali trying to convey or express or tell me? Besides the fact that the woman is in his mind, on his mind, in the image, exactly, his head got popped open. Perhaps because he was focusing on a woman, trusting her for a split second, or turning his head away for a moment.

That car should say ‘Science for all hominids!’” the ape cried. “Are we not hominids, too, just like the humans?” The apes roared in agreement, pounding their chests and stamping their feet. Teeth bared and eyes glinting, the apes leapt onto the car, vociferating the phrase, “For homo erectus!

As our ancestral populations spread across the globe, they encountered the same environments and selective forces that shaped the phenotypes of other populations endemic to these regions. The imprint of these regional selective forces is still evidenced by genetically determined differences in the characteristics of indigenous populations of humans, who often exhibit the same ecogeographic patterns described earlier for other native wildlife. In comparison to populations endemic to tropical regions of the continents, human populations native to lands in the higher latitudes tend to be larger and have relatively shorter limbs—following Bergmann’s and Allen’s rules, respectively. Our indigenous populations also exhibit latitudinal variation in skin color reminiscent of Gloger’s rule: darker skin (greater melanism) in the tropics, protecting native humans from the potentially destructive effects of intense solar radiation; lighter skin in high latitude populations of our species promoting absorption of the limited sunlight to levels sufficient to stimulate the production and storage of vital nutrients in the skin. On islands, the body size of primates (including insular populations of hominids) generally follows the island rule—exhibiting a graded trend toward more pronounced dwarfism in the larger species. The hominid of Flores Island (the “hobbit”) was only one-third to one-half the mass of its ancestor (most likely, Homo erectus). The island peoples of Indonesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and the Philippines also tend to be relatively small in stature, again consistent with the island rule.

The early discoveries from Lake Turkana included remarkable fossils, including a skull then thought to be the earliest specimen of Homo from anywhere in the world. Scientists today identify it as the best example of the species Homo rudolfensis, a contemporary of habilis. In 1984, the hominid gang’s most accomplished fossil hunter, Kamoya Kimeu, found the first pieces of a skeleton that would eventually become the most complete Homo erectus yet discovered. Known as Turkana Boy, it is a young male, aged at approximately 1.5 million years old, with many humanlike body structures but key differences in the brain, skull, and teeth.

As far back as 400,000 years ago Homo erectus was capable of speech,

The modern comforts and conveniences that now most influence our daily experience—cars, computers, television, climate control, smartphones, ultraprocessed food, and more—have been used by our species for about 100 years or less. That’s around 0.03 percent of the time we’ve walked the earth. Include all the Homos—habilis, erectus, heidelbergensis, neanderthalensis, and us—and open the time scale to 2.5 million years and the figure drops to 0.004 percent. Constant comfort is a radically new thing for us humans.

Most cannot say the words without giggling, blushing, or otherwise feeling like an immature twelve-year-old. But that’s okay. It can be done but only after years of serious postgraduate training and a healthy respect for paleoanthropology. Say it. Homo erectus. Yes, it literally means 'erect man.' Homo erectus was a hominid ancestor who contributed to the evolution of modern humans, otherwise known as our own species, Homo sapiens. The last two million years or so was an important period during our evolution, one that has spawned decades of important research and numerous books"​

Most cannot say the words without giggling, blushing, or otherwise feeling like an immature twelve-year-old. But that’s okay. It can be done but only after years of serious postgraduate training and a healthy respect for paleoanthropology. Say it. Homo erectus. Yes, it literally means 'erect man.' Homo erectus was a hominid ancestor who contributed to the evolution of modern humans, otherwise known as our own species, Homo sapiens. The last two million years or so was an important period during our evolution, one that has spawned decades of important research and numerous books

In the late-twentieth century, an anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist named Robin Dunbar proposed a theory that Homo sapiens can only care about, identify with, and maintain stable relationships with 150 people. This number correlates to the size of the social groups in our evolutionary past. When we were Homo erectus, we lived in small hunter-gatherer groups bonded by sociality. Back then, only caring about our immediate group was advantageous. It helped us defend our tribe. It helped us advance, and survive. But that limitation carried forward. Today, in a given tragedy, we can overlay the faces of our family, friends, and co-workers on only 150 people. Beyond that, compassion fades, but not because we’re evil. Our emotional hardwiring can’t cope with it. We’re living in a global community of ten billion, with brains that can only feel compassion for our immediate clan. Other factors come into play, such as distance. A tragedy across the world is harder to feel compassion for than one in our own neighborhood. People who don’t look like us are more challenging to identify with. And if our species has a problem with apathy, and feeling compassion for the pain of others in real time, how can we expect ourselves to conjure compassion for a tragedy that hasn’t even happened yet? The victims of Homo sapiens’ demise haven’t even been born. What emotional incentive do we have to make the sacrifices that will save future generations, if our brains aren’t capable of caring about them sufficiently?

Homo erectus ne se réfugie plus dans les arbres, c’est un véritable chasseur qui parcourt de grandes distances en milieu découvert. Il est bien adapté à la chaleur des savanes et des steppes. Il est peut-être le premier à posséder une peau nue, capable de transpirer.

Plusieurs espèces humaines ont ainsi coexisté sur la planète jusqu’à une époque extraordinairement récente. Tandis que le primitif Homo erectus et peut-être Homo floresiensis se maintenaient en Asie, l’homme de Néandertal et l’ancêtre de l’homme moderne, dont nous parlerons dans les chapitres suivants, prospéraient déjà, en Europe pour le premier, en Afrique pour le second. Cette coexistence sur la planète bouleverse une conception linéaire de l’évolution de l’homme et pose la question de sa place dans la nature. L’existence d’une seule espèce humaine dominatrice est l’exception actuelle, après trois millions d’années au cours desquelles la répartition des territoires entre plusieurs hominines avait été la règle.

Evolved to Run Walking long distances is fundamental to being a hunter-gatherer, but people sometimes have to run. One powerful motivation is to sprint to a tree or some other refuge when being chased by a predator. Although you only have to run faster than the next fellow when a lion chases you, bipedal humans are comparatively slow. The world’s fastest humans can run at 37 kilometers (23 miles) per hour for about ten to twenty seconds, whereas an average lion can run at least twice as fast for approximately four minutes. Like us, early Homo must have been pathetic sprinters whose terrified dashes were too often ineffective. However, there is plentiful evidence that by the time of H. erectus our ancestors had evolved exceptional abilities to run long distances at moderate speeds in hot conditions. The adaptations underlying these abilities helped transform the human body in crucial ways and explain why humans, even amateur athletes, are among the best long-distance runners in the mammalian world. Today, humans run long distances to stay fit, commute, or just have fun, but the struggle to get meat underlies the origins of endurance running. To appreciate this inference, try to imagine what it was like for the first humans to hunt or scavenge 2 million years ago. Most carnivores kill using a combination of speed and strength. Large predators, such as lions and leopards, either chase or pounce on their prey and then dispatch it with lethal force. These dangerous carnivores can run as fast as 70 kilometers (43 miles) per hour, and they have terrifying natural weapons: daggerlike fangs, razor-sharp claws, and heavy paws to help them maim and kill. Hunters

An even more important invention was the control of fire. No one is quite sure when humans first managed to regularly create and use fire. Currently, the earliest evidence for the controlled use of fire by humans comes from a million-year-old site in South Africa and from a 790,000-year-old site in Israel.18 Traces of fire, however, remain rare until 400,000 years ago, when fireplaces and burnt bones start showing up regularly in sites, suggesting that archaic Homo, unlike H. erectus, habitually cooked its food.19 Cooking, when it did catch on, was a transformative advance. For one, cooked food yields much more energy than uncooked food and is less likely to make you sick. Fire also allowed archaic humans to keep warm in cold habitats, to fend off dangerous predators, like cave bears, and to stay up late at night.

Die Pluralität des Lesens ist das eine, die Priorität das andere. Lesen ist, so paradox die These zunächst auch erscheint, eine menschliche Tätigkeit, die der Schrift vorausging. Sie ist sozusagen genetisch älter, denn schon lange bevor vor über 5000 Jahren die Schrift in Gebrauch genommen wurde, hatten sich im Zuge der phylogenetischen Entwikclung des Gehirns dort spezifische Regionen gebildet, die für Sprache zuständig sind und auf deren Tätigkeit sich die Kompetenz für Lesen und Schreiben aufbaut. Lesen gilt deswegen als die ältere Kompetenz, weil sie sich neurobiologisch aus der Fähigkeit des Spurenlesens entwickelte, die schon den Homo habilis und Homo erectus in den Stand versetzten, sein Überleben zu sichern.

It’s a common fallacy to envision these species as arranged in a straight line of descent, with Ergaster begetting Erectus, Erectus begetting the Neanderthals, and the Neanderthals evolving into us. This linear model gives the mistaken impression that at any particular moment only one type of human inhabited the earth, and that all earlier species were merely older models of ourselves. The truth is that from about 2 million years ago until around 10,000 years ago, the world was home, at one and the same time, to several human species.

Wrangham believes the cooking of food began during the time of Homo erectus, a human ancestor that lived between 1.6 million and 1.9 million years ago.

We can now say this: the capacities that homo erectus and homo sapiens generically have in common - such that they may both be generically characterized as 'walking', 'eating', 'drinking', and 'playing' - must formally differ in the manner in which they are done in order for these respective pairs of sets of activities to belong to the very different forms of life that they do. The philosophical obstacles that stand in the way of such a vision of the human animal are considerable. If the wish to transpose Wittgenstein's point here into Boyle's Kantian idiom, then it may be put as follows: walking, eating, and drinking are not just parts of our material animal nature that can be brought into view apart from their relation to a form. If we seek to understand what is involved in learning to walk, eat, and drink as we do, this will require conceiving those activities under the aspect of their human form. Such forms of learning characterize 'initiation' into our form of life no less deeply than learning how to give orders, ask questions, tell stories, and chat. In relation to the concept of our form of life, not only do these capacities all stand at the same level, but more importantly: those in the one set would not be of the sort that characterize our form of life unless they were part and parcel of a single form of life that also involved those in the other. Our manner of walking, eating, drinking, and playing and our manner of giving orders, asking questions, telling stories, and chatting all partake of a single form. The form here in question figures in Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy as a very abstract logical (or, as he later prefers to say, grammatical) category - the category of a form of life.

Like Blumenberg, Bataille relates uprightness to the origins of mythology, and, like Freud and Ferenczi, he formats the ‘progressive election [from] quadruped to Homo erectus’ as a deviation from coprophiliac anality. Bataille fixates upon half-upright monkeys, who, he delectates, expose their ‘anal projections’ like ‘excremental skulls’. Inasmuch as their knuckle-dragging existence is some kind of ugly ‘halfway house’ between horizontal and vertical modes of carriage, primates are cast as some kind of partway antithesis on the stepwise ascent to mankind’s upright ‘nobility’: a dialectical step between horizontal and vertical, the monkey is awkwardly diagonal. (Primate posture thus inhabits a kind of uncanny valley—from which Bataille derives much titillation.) Nonetheless, by way of necrotizing the Renaissance cliché of orthograde ‘dignity’, Bataille locates in man’s spinal realignment merely a more refined lasciviousness—a more violent voluptuousness. To wit, he pinpoints ‘Two Terrestrial Axes’: the ‘vertical’, which ‘prolongs the radius of the terrestrial sphere’ as axis of libertine escape, lorded by ocean tides and plants (which ‘flee’ the earth to sacrifice themselves ‘endlessly’ to the Sun’s downward onslaught); and the ‘horizontal’, domicile to beasts and ‘analogous to the turning of the earth’. ‘Only human beings’, Bataille notes, ‘tearing themselves away from peaceful animal horizontality’, have ‘succeeded in appropriating the vegetal erection’, surrendering themselves to exquisite upwards collapse towards outer space’s solar enormities and fluxions.

in a book like Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, now says that the Portlandesque bumper-sticker view of evolution as a linear progression from monkey to Homo erectus to Homo sapiens to (naturally) progressive secular humanist is untrue. Many scientists now think that all sorts of hominin species were on the earth at the same time. (Fun fact: the average person of European ancestry is 2 percent Neanderthal.4) Harari makes the case that the

Homo Cannot Erectus

Съгласно приетата систематизация, проявяващите се в нашата Галактика анормални форми образуват типа Abberantia (Извратенци), който се дели на подтипове Debilitates (Слабоумци) и Antisapientinales (Неразумци). Към последния подтип се отнасят класовете Canaliacele (Мерзотняци) и Necroludentia (Трупосквернци). Сред Трупосквернците различаваме подразделенията Patricidiасеае (Отцеубийци), Matriphagideae (Майцеядци), и Lasciviaceae (Гнусотняци или Развратняци). Крайно извратената форма Гнусотняци делим на Cretininae (Кретенци), например Cadaverium Mordans (Трупогризци), и Horrorissimae (Ужасняци) с класически представител в лицето на Мътилник Изпъченяк, Idiontus Erectus Gzeemsi. Някои Ужасняци създават собствена псевдокултура; към тях отнасяме видове като Anophilus Belligerens, Дупелюбец… Войнствуващ, който се именува Genius Pulcherrimus Mundanus (най-прекрасният гений на света) както и онзи специфичен екземпляр със съвършено плешиво тяло, наблюдаван от Грампулус в най-затънтеното кътче на нашата Галактика — Monstroteratum Furiosum (Гнусотник Беснеещ), който сам се нарича Homo sapiens.

And we see such hierarchy in the organisation of the Homo erectus settlement of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov. But hierarchy is something that would only be needed in direct proportion to the growth of complexity in communication content – what is being talked about – as information flow grew faster and more complex. Information-rich communication, especially when coming at high rates of speed typical of human languages, will be aided, just as Simon predicted, by being structured in particular ways.

From the beginnings of the invention of symbols, at least 1.9 million years ago by Homo erectus, there has been sufficient time to discover this small range of possibilities and, via the grammar, meaning, pitches and gestures of language, to build morphological systems from them.*

Despite the passage of close to a million years since Homo erectus first sailed to Flores, however, what archaeology does not concede is that the human species could have developed and refined those early nautical skills to the extent of being able to cross a vast ocean like the Pacific or the Atlantic from one side to the other. In the case of the former, extensive transoceanic journeys are not believed to have been undertaken until about 3,500 years ago, during the so-called Polynesian expansion. And the mainstream historical view is that the Atlantic was not successfully navigated until 1492--the year in which, as the schoolyard mnemonic has it, "Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Indeed, the notion that long transoceanic voyages were a technological impossibility during the Stone Age remains one of the central structural elements of the dominant reference frame of archaeology--a reference frame that geneticists see no reason not to respect and deploy when interpreting their own data. Since that reference frame rules out, a priori, the option of a direct ocean crossing between Australasia and South America during the Paleolithic and instead is adamant that all settlement came via northeast Asia, geneticists tend to approach the data from that perspective.

During the evolution of the hominids from the earliest forms of Homo erectus to the fully modern forms of Homo sapiens, the brain more than doubled in size, yet throughout this period the size of the human body did not increase at all. And,

Without the technologies of fire, dwellings, and clothing, the size of the hominid brain would have been unable to expand much beyond the 650 cc size of the brain of Homo ergaster, the likely ancestor of Homo erectus—and humanity would have remained, to this day, little more than a very intelligent, meat-eating, tool-making, weapons-carrying, two-legged ape.

WHAT fire meant for hominids and ultimately for the rest of the natural world is presaged vividly by a cave excavation in South Africa.1 At the deepest and therefore oldest strata, there are no carbon deposits and hence no fire. Here one finds full skeletal remains of large cats and fragmentary bone shards—bearing tooth marks—of many fauna, among which is Homo erectus. At a higher, later stratum, one finds carbon deposits signifying fire. Here, there are full skeletal remains of Homo erectus and fragmentary bone shards of various mammals, reptiles, and birds, among which are a few gnawed bones of large cats. The change in cave “ownership” and the reversal in who was apparently eating whom testify eloquently to the power of fire for the species that first learned to use it. At the very least, fire provided warmth, light, and relative safety from nocturnal predators as well as a precursor to the domus or hearth.

Perhaps the greatest distance runner on earth, Homo erectus was the unsurpassed marvel of its time. No other creature has ever contrasted more starkly with all the animals that had ever lived. Neanderthalensis and sapiens were born from and first lived in the shadow of erectus. We were not new. They were. Sapiens are just the improved model of Homo. Erectus was the first to journey. They were the original imagination-motivated travellers.

And identical reasoning applies to the unwarranted claims that language originated as a mutation, or that Homo erectus lacked symbolic representations.

Moreover, there are languages spoken in the world today whose grammars have aspects reminiscent of what Homo erectus languages might have been like – namely symbols ordered according to cultural conventions

But the fact remains that 2 million years ago in Africa, a Homo erectus community began to share information among its members by means of language.

maintained 2-million-year-old solutions to information transfer first invented by Homo erectus. This possibility cannot be dismissed.

The relevance of all the above to language evolution is that even Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, Denisovans and Homo sapiens would have – in the gradual construction of relationships, roles and shared knowledge bases – interpreted what people said, from the very first syllable uttered or gesture made, based on their view of the person and their understanding of their context.

Careful imitation could also explain why hand axes managed to stay so similar to each other for over a million years. If Homo erectus simply looked over old hand axes to guess how to make them, they would have accidentally introduced little variations to their craft. Over a few thousand years, those mismatches would have caused the hand ax to drift far away from its original shape.

The first fossil with a definite and undisputed claim to human ancestorhood is Homo erectus,42 for some time a contemporary of these later upright apes. Erectus appeared before 1.8 MYA

Describing how sound recording equipment worked in the 1980s to a teenager today is like a Homo habilis explaining how he used to slap mammoths to death to the Homo erectus who has just invented the spear. Even as you describe the process, you feel as obsolete in the world as the technology you’re describing.

This point raises an interesting question about language evolution, namely who spoke first? Over the past two centuries a plethora of ancestors for humans have been proposed, from South Africa, Java and Beijing, to the Neanderthal Valley and Olduvai Gorge. At the same time, researchers have proposed several novel hominin species, leading to a confusing evolutionary mosaic. To avoid getting caught up in a morass of uncertain proposals, only three language-possessing species need to be discussed – Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens.