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Homo erectus

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The Origins of Humanity · PREHISTORY

A pioneer of humanity

Homo erectus is one of the first human species to spread beyond the African continent, colonizing Asia over nearly two million years. While its name remains associated, in everyday language, with the earliest settlement of many regions of the world, science today more precisely distinguishes where this species is genuinely attested — and where, by contrast, its identity remains uncertain.

🌍 A species born in Africa, discovered in Java

In Africa itself, one of the oldest skulls attributed to the species, KNM-ER 3733, dated to 1.63 ± 0.15 million years, was discovered in 1975 at Koobi Fora (Kenya) by Bernard Ngeneo, during a survey led by Richard Leakey — a fossil sometimes classified under the name Homo ergaster, the African form of the species. But it is in Asia that the very first fossil attributed to this lineage was uncovered, in 1891-1892 in Java, Indonesia, by the Dutch physician and anatomist Eugène Dubois. Named Pithecanthropus erectus — literally “upright ape-man” — this fossil gave the species its definitive name once the classification was revised: Homo erectus, “upright man,” in reference to its ability to walk fully upright. Among the oldest fossils accepted by the scientific community is the Mojokerto child, also found in Java and dated to around 1.45 million years.

These Asian discoveries long focused attention on the region, before other sites came to clarify the history of the species’ dispersal from its African cradle toward the rest of the Old World.

🚶 Dmanisi and Turkana Boy: the first great dispersal

The site of Dmanisi, in Georgia, has yielded the oldest human remains known outside Africa: five exceptionally well-preserved skulls (Dmanisi 1 to 5), along with about a hundred postcranial fossils, sealed beneath a basalt flow precisely dated to 1.85 million years, placing the site’s occupation at around 1.8 million years. First assigned in 2002 to a distinct species, Homo georgicus, these fossils are today widely considered early representatives of Homo erectus that had reached Eurasia.

In Africa itself, the skeleton KNM-WT 15000, nicknamed Turkana Boy (or Nariokotome Boy), remains the most significant discovery for understanding the species’ anatomy. Uncovered in August 1984 near Lake Turkana, Kenya, by the Kenyan paleoanthropologist Kamoya Kimeu, this skeleton, dated to 1.5 to 1.6 million years, is the most complete ever found for Homo erectus: that of an adolescent who died between 8 and 9 years old, already 1.6 m tall and weighing 48 kg, whose study made it possible to establish the species’ body proportions and development with unprecedented precision.

🕰️ A species that spanned nearly two million years — and why it is not attested in France

Anatomically, Homo erectus is characterized by a cranial capacity of 900 to 1200 cm³, a height of between 1.50 and 1.65 m, a powerful jaw, marked prognathism, and a low forehead. Depending on the region and period, the species used both Oldowan-type tools and more elaborate industries close to the Acheulean. Its longevity is remarkable: the last known representatives, at Ngandong, in Java, are dated between 117,000 and 108,000 years — a late survival that means populations of Homo erectus may have coexisted, in Asia, with the first representatives of Homo sapiens elsewhere in the world.

This longevity and this wide Asian dispersal contrast with the absence, in the current state of knowledge, of any European presence clearly attributed to Homo erectus in the strict sense. European fossils of the same antiquity are generally attributed to other taxa — such as Homo antecessor in Spain — or left without definitive attribution. It is precisely this uncertainty that leads to the cautious use of the phrase “archaic human groups” for the oldest French sites, such as Vallonnet, Lézignan-la-Cèbe, or Pont-de-Lavaud, rather than attributing them, without proof, to Homo erectus.

🧠 Key points

  • The first fossil of the species, Pithecanthropus erectus, was discovered in Java in 1891-1892 by Eugène Dubois
  • Dmanisi (Georgia, ~1.8 Ma) has yielded the oldest human remains known outside Africa
  • Turkana Boy (Kenya, 1.5-1.6 Ma), discovered in 1984 by Kamoya Kimeu, remains the most complete skeleton of the species
  • The last known representatives, at Ngandong (Java), survived until around 108,000-117,000 years ago
  • No presence of Homo erectus in the strict sense is currently attested in France — the oldest French sites remain attributed to “archaic human groups” not identified with certainty