Homo erectus
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Homo erectus (meaning "upright man", from the Latin
ērigere, "to put up, set upright") is an extinct
species of
hominid that lived throughout most of the
Pleistocene geological epoch. Its earliest fossil evidence dates to 1.9 million years ago and the most recent to 70,000 years ago. It is generally thought that
H. erectus originated in
Africa and spread from there, migrating throughout Eurasia as far as
Georgia,
India,
Sri Lanka,
China and
Indonesia. But other scientists posit that the species rose first, or separately, in Asia.
Debate also continues about the classification, ancestry, and progeny of
Homo erectus, especially vis-à-vis
Homo ergaster, with two major positions: 1)
H. erectus is the same species as
H. ergaster, and thereby
H. erectus is a direct ancestor of the later hominins including
Homo heidelbergensis,
Homo neanderthalensis, and
Homo sapiens; or, 2) it is in fact an
Asianspecies distinct from African
H. ergaster.
There is also another view—an alternative to 1): some
palaeoanthropologists consider
H. ergaster to be a variety, that is, the "
African" variety, of
H. erectus, and they offer the labels "
Homo erectus sensu stricto" (strict sense) for the Asian species and "
Homo erectus sensu lato" (broad sense) for the greater species comprising both Asian and African populations.
A new debate appeared in 2013, with the documentation of the
Dmanisi skulls. Considering the large morphological variation among all Dmanisi skulls, researchers now suggest that several early human ancestors variously classified, for example, as
Homo ergaster, or
Homo rudolfensis, and perhaps even
Homo habilis, should instead be designated as
Homo erectus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus
Source : Culture portal