When reading my last blog post on the geographic origin
of Homo sapiens it may have surprised
you to learn that our own species was not the first to venture out of the
motherland and into unchartered territories. The first colonisation was actually achieved over a million years before our H. sapiens had even evolved. This ancient species began as H. ergaster and became H. eretus
The origin and dispersal of these species is still much
debated (anthropologists never seem to agree on anything!), but I will take you
on the journey that is most widely accepted. If you are interested in other
theories then please comment below and we can examine the debate in detail.
The setting today is Eastern Africa 1.8 million years ago –
the home of H. ergaster. This species possessed a larger brain than its predecessor H. habilis, and was likely fully bipedal; the remains of this species is almost entirely found in the African continent. However it seems these apemen were not content in their home land as a small band managed to migrate north across a grassy Sahara and across the Levantine corridor into Israel. It is in this region of the world that we think the speciation into H.erectus occured as speciemens have been found in Dmanisi Georgia. This new species was the most advanced Hominin yet and had many similarities to us. However there was one very noticeable difference - these guys had HUGE brow
ridges; the purpose of which is still unknown.
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| Take a look at those brow ridges! Fig 1 |
Their journey continued from here, over the next few 100,000 years they spread
across Asia and into Europe; we know this by analysing remains which have been found in S.E Asia 1.6ma and Spain 1.1ma.
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| The route taken by H. erectus Fig 2 |
To be able to master the multitude of ecosystems that must have
encountered along their epic journey across the Old World they must have been
highly adaptable and extremely hardy. Their success may be owed to their
advanced stone tools made with Archeulean technology and their highly meat orientated diet, allowing
enough energy to fuel a big brain. Interestingly none of these tools are found
east of India, a cut-off named the Movius Line. However in my opinion this is
due to H. erectus's adaption to
utilising local materials such as bamboo to make tools.
I hope you’ve learned something in this post, next time
we’ll examine how climate enabled this migration to take place.
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