Anthropology 150

 Homo habilis

 Homo erectus

 First identified member of the genus Homo

 Almost certainly developed from a population of gracile Australopithecines,

larger brain (Cranial capacity 580 - 750 cc.),

larger body size and more efficient bipedal

Brain Reorganization

Larger Broca’s area – part of frontal lobe linked to speech and control of motor activities.

Larger Wernicke’s area --part of the parietal lobe linked to language comprehension and also for the integration of visual, auditory and tactile information.

Better cooling: Blood from the brain circulates through the skull to the scalp. An adaptation to increasingly terrestrial adaptation in the savanna.

 Tool use – Oldowan tools

 Scavenging – not a hunter

 Greater capacity for abstract thought – able to model a complex environmental mosaic as the savanna grasslands expand and forest patches are more widely separated.

The Nariokotome Homo

erectus skeleton

(from Walker and Leakey 1996)

* Larger brain that H.

Habilis (early specimens

average 900 cc., late

specimens approximately

1200 cc.).

*Reduction in

postcanine dentition

(molars and premolars),

and a correlated decrease

in jaw size.

* Vertical shortening of

the face.

* Shortening of arm to

come very modern limb

proportions (postcranial

proportions are very

similar to tropically

adapted modern humans).

* The development of a

more barrel-shaped chest.

* Craium shaped like a

“deflated football”.

*Prominent brow ridges

* Reached modern

human size in terms of

height.

The stone tool industry associated

with Home erectus is called

“Acheulean.”

The archetypal tool is the

handaxe. The handaxe was most

likely a general-purpose tool, used

for cutting, scraping, and digging.

 Homo erectus hunting site

 Occupied ca. 1.4 – 1.6 mya

The faunal remains from Olorgesaillie show the killing and butchering of large

Numbers of baboons. Parts of the carcass were selectively transported away from

The site, presumably to the Homo erectus camps. In the image above, the

Pink-shaded areas represent portions of the skeleton found at the site.

 Excavating the surface of site Q1\B (the hominid locality).

 Boxgrove is a Middle Pleistocene site in West Sussex, England. Since the early 1980s a number of localities within the gravel quarries at Boxgrove have provided information on Homo erectus in Northern Europe.

 Artifacts and faunal remains are preserved at Boxgrove within an extensive set of geological deposits preserved across 26km of the West Sussex Coastal Plain. These deposits were lain down at the end of a temperate interglacial period almost half a million years ago. They reflect a range of depositional environments from open marine foreshore, through regressional lagoonal deposits, terrestrial land surfaces and cold stage periglacial deposits. In the photograph on the right, the remains of the chalk cliff eroded by marine action at the start of the sequence can be seen. Up against this cliff a beach of rounded flint pebbles was deposited. The sediments overlying this beach were formed by the collapse of the cliff and mass movement of chalky sediments off the Downs to the north of the site. These calcium carbonate rich gravels sealed the sequence and chemically aided the preservation of bone at the site.

 The site of Torralba, named after a nearby village, is situated in north-central Spain, 156 km northeast of Madrid; it lies near the end of a valley cut by the Ambrona-Masegar river. Two km upstream is another significant site named Ambrona.

 Animal bones were discovered at Torralba in 1888 when water mains were laid during the construction of a railway. Between

 1909 and 1911, the Marqu´es de Cerralbo carried out excavations, but never published a full description of his findings.

 Torralba lay unnoticed until 1961-63, when F. Clark Howell conducted excavations at the remaining intact portion of the site; he also conducted further excavations in 1980-81, and 1984.

The disarticulated long

bones of mammoths

Were excavated at

Torralba/Ambrona,

demonstrating large-scale

cooperative hunting by

Homo erectus groups.

The reconstructed pattern of seasonal migration looks a great deal like that of

Modern hunters and gatherers. In essence, by 500,000 years ago Homo erectus

Was behaving like modern humans.

 The genus Homo was and is characterized by cultural abilities that are greater than other hominids.

 It is the cultural hominids that survived

 The non-cultural hominids (the robust Australopithecines) eventually go extinct

 Cultural behavior is not biological per se, but the ability to be cultural is based on biology and is the product of natural selection.