Talk:Homo erectus

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[edit] Use of Fire Atypical? Really?

From the article: Regardless, it can at least be surmised that the controlled use of fire was atypical of Homo erectus until its decline and the rise of more advanced species of the Homo genus came to the forefront. Really?? Why?? Remember the historic aphorism: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If there is evidence that members of this species, in several areas around the world, during several time periods, controlled the use of fire (as cited in the article), and since the number of known Homo Erectus sites are limited and in no way could be considered a statistical sample, why should we present the idea that all sites with fire are atypical? Enlighten me. WBardwin 06:20, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm with you, buddy. I read that sentence and did a quick double-take but still can't see what it means. Does that mean fire became typical in the decline of Homo erectus? How do we know that? Moreover, there is a possibility that fire precedes erectus (see under Olduwan). What then? I'm in favor of deleting the sentence. Otherwise it seems to say "this typical fire is atypical..."Botteville 00:06, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

There are two incidence of possible fire use by erectus: one found at Zhoukoudian in China and the other at a site in East Rudolf (east of Lake Turkana) in Kenya. However, in both cases, there are other possible ways to explain the fire evidence, which make them equivocal. However, with that said, I believe erectus is likely to be the first candidate to use fire (may be even control fire) because of its widespread distribution. It's true that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But one cannot argue with negative evidence, because without hard evidence, it's just spectulation. --Silverhalo 03:28, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Added...

...section on daughter and sub-species. This could be a good placeholder for things like Tchadanthropus uxoris and Telanthropus capensis. Marskell 11:58, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] reversion

I reverted out some obscenity. I left some on this page so you can see what is happening.Botteville 04:28, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

No need. Just do the reversion. We can check the history to see who has done what. - UtherSRG (talk) 11:35, 28 September 2005 (UTC) OK, thanks.Botteville 23:56, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merger

I tend to think not, and here is why. The "Individual Fossils" section describes specific sites and finds. There are 3 sections there, one of which is "Java Man." Why merge Java Man and not Peking Man or Turkana Boy? Alternatively, if you bring Java Man into the main article, you ought to bring in the others as well. However, this is a significant amount of material, more than you might want in one article. Even if you opted for the larger article, there are a whole lot more finds not currently mentioned that sooner or later are going to turn up here. I would say, put Pithecanthropus erectus back to Java man with a redirect on the former to the latter and a reference to the main article. That is how Peking Man is handled. Moreover, there is some question about whether Homo erectus can apply to all, so the name may not be all that stable. If erectus or Homo get broken up, it will be easier to change Wikipedia in discrete modules. Thanks.Botteville 23:55, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] OH COMON!!!

Who erassed my pic of Homo erectus?

I did. Most of your edit appeared to come from the Smithsonian site that you listed on the page, and so probably violates Wikipedia's copyright policies. I did not know if the photograph was copyrighted as well. If is is not, please feel free to put it back. Best wishes. WBardwin 04:32, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I just joined this site and am still learning how to use it. Wikipidea seems too complex and I had no idea you could not directly copy off web pages. So the info must be in your own words right? But that takes too long. Not that I don't know anything about H. erectus, in fact I was about to make my own web page this year.

Ah -- welcome to Wikipedia! Yes, Wiki has to be very careful about copyright, as Wiki itself is a "free" web site and available for others to copy. They are particularly protective about photographs. Lawsuits abound in the world today. So we all have to create the material, but a little bit of careful cut and paste is usually alright. Give yourself some time on the site. I resist (like mad) reading instructions, but it didn't take me long to feel pretty comfortable here. Of course, I learn new things all the time too. Look forward to working with you. Homo erectus could use your insight, I'm sure. WBardwin 04:48, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Expand

I feel this page should be expanded since H. erectus is one of the most notable, and popular hominins in Human evolution.--King of the Dancehall 23:09, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

That's nice. However, it's already a nice size. It doesn't need an {{expand}} tag. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:04, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Well if you compare it with A. afarensis the size of this page is too small. Besides H. erectus has too much info expanding from Africa, Europe and Asia for such a short page. The facts are well put out but more should describe about their possible mental capabilities or social structures. I don't mind small ones like A. gahri or H. cepranensis because little is known from them.

I made 90% of the edits into "turkana boy", I wrote down facts yet other possibilities (ie. skin tone, social behavior and possible language) which I obtained from BBC's Dawn of Man and a book from Richard Leakey (I don't remember the name). (2000). --King of the Dancehall 17:50, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

A word of caution. Popular media often 'spice' up the reality of how much we can interpret from the fossil and archaeological record. For instance, a lot of the social behaviors and physical appearances are purely imaginary! --Silverhalo 03:33, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The non-african H. erectus?

If all Homo Sapiens/Modern Humans are believed to be the descendants of an early H. Sapien group that evolved from the Homo erectus in the African continent, and than migrated into other parts of the earth. But than whatever happened to the H. Erectus that left Africa and Migrated into Asia and part of Europe, did they all die? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Robwi (talk • contribs) .

Yes. One way or another, they are all dead. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:59, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Though some people dug up some of their bones, so we know "what happened" to some of them... :-) (I know, I know, cart before the horse and all that). Carcharoth 12:25, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Their descendants may have been around a lot longer than we gave them credit for -- see the recently discovered Homo floresiensis. WBardwin 09:02, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Modern Descendants?

Is there scientific proof that the Homo-Erectus is related to the Slavic people inhabiting Eastern Russia today? Maybe descendants of Slavs? Hit me back.--69.255.16.162 05:18, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

They're not thought to be the ancestors (descendants are the ones that come after, not before) of any specific ethnic group or groups. Rather, they're the ancestors of Homo sapiens sapiens (modern humans) as a whole. Not only were they around long before our ethnic groups developed, they were in fact around long before our entire species developed, and our entire species is descended from theirs!

Asking if Slavs descended from Homo erectus is kind of like asking if your best friend is descended from Mitochondrial Eve. Just as you, your best friend, and every other human alive today all descended from "Eve", so too did all humans who ever lived descend from the species Homo erectus! Pretty amazing stuff, no? --Icarus ^(Hi!) 07:24, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Homo erectus is the whole show

They are our immediate ancesters! As I understand it . . . (1) We have been as smart as we are for about the last 150,000 years. (2) Prior to that, we were officially Homo erectus (arbitrary cut-off has to be somewhere) and almost as smart as we are now. (3) Homo erectus goes back to about one and a half million years ago ago. We were evolving in other areas besides just intelligence, but it was mainly intelligence because a million and a half is just a blink of the eye in geological time. (4) Neanderthals are not on our direct ancestral line. They are our cousins! They also evolved from Homo erectus. (5) The whole fascinating subject of cultural evolution, just as smart for 150,000 years, and we only started doing agriculture about 8,000 years ago? I guess cultural evolution kind of starts slow and then takes off. FriendlyRiverOtter 07:40, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I thought H.Erectus was roughly equivilent to H.Neanderthalus in time and that they also overlaped with H.Sapian Sapians. This occured in S.East Asia for the H.Erectus as compared to Western Europe for H.Neanderthalus.

On another note this aritical has been vandalized. Could someone who knows what they are doing please fix it. I like penis jokes as much as anyone but not here.

[edit] This page needs to be cleaned up

This page is really sloppy, but I don't really know that much about the subject... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Afu1111 (talk • contribs) .

There are several helpful links on your talk page, please read them. Also, please sign talk edits with four tildes (~). - UtherSRG (talk) 11:09, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be a separate heading for Homo erectus migration? This topic seems to be scattered throughout the article messily. Justinmeister 17:45, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree that a major cleanup is needed. Two problems really jumped out at me. First, the cute bullet list in "Descendants and Subspecies" never explains what the indentation levels mean. (I know what they mean, but only because I know the science, not because this page explains it.) Second, this page never states when Homo erectus first appeared and when it died out! Obviously each of these is a disputed date range, but something needs to be mentioned. I came to Wikipedia because I saw a claim that Homo erectus fossils in Java are merely 10,000 years old. This was surprising to me. But nothing on the page says anything about when Homo erectus ended. - Lawrence King 18:02, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I rewrote some of the beginning stuff...and changed 'subspecies' to Synonyms. I also added stuff on major fossils... Haha...Javaneses erectus were gone long before 10,000 years (10 Ka) - 10 Ka is the beginning of the Holocene. In fact, if floresiensis is derived from erectus, they are only 18 Ka. The youngest date for erectus is from Ngandong, at circa 46-27 Ka, based on U-series and ESR, published by Carl Swisher et al. from Rutgers University. But the date is controversial because the we are not sure which dirt layer Ng were found. There is also good evidence that some of the fossil mammals found at the site (which the young dates are based on) are washed in.--Silverhalo 03:19, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Derived

Could someone explain what derived means in the sense of: "Homo erectus has fairly derived morphological features" Ironcorona 19:02, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

derived, in this case, can be taken to mean toward the modern condition. for instance, a larger brain size would be a derived feature because we see an increase in brain size through time from genus Australopithecus to genus Homo. Another derived morphological feature in Homo erectus would be a decrease in the size of the molar teeth or a decrease in the size of the canine (when compared to,say, Australopithecus afarensis). --Silverhalo 03:55, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I have three questions.

Hello

What are the main differences, between the Homo erectus and Homo sapiens,can they Interbreed? and how do you find out the dates of these fossils.

Cheers and regards.

86.147.252.83 14:00, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, I would think they can interbreed but their children can not reproduce, like horse and donkey, and lion with tiger. Also if they can, there should be descendants now..Dongwenliang 18:44, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

No, they cannot, because the other one has died out. You may try it out if you find one... 91.153.53.189 07:40, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed merger

The few one or two paragraph articles on other species names, such as Tchadanthropus uxoris should be merged into this article, or a new article should be created for the combined history of fossils that have eventually been merged into Homo erectus. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:38, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What happened to H. erectus

This article needs to treat when H. erectus ceased to exist--did the species go extinct or was it absorbed into H. sapiens? With Spencer Wells' "Journey of Man" film and book stating that all humans today are descended from H. sapiens who journeyed out of Africa c. 50-60 thousand years ago, it isn't clear what the relationship is with H. erectus, who made the same journey (as far as Java at least) hundreds of thousands of years earlier. Badagnani 08:22, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

It most certainly went extinct (as none exist today). Just because H. sapiens evolved from erectus doesn't mean erectus went extinct then and there. It's possible that a population of erectus in africa evolved humans (Recent single-origin hypothesis) and another population in flores evolved into the hobbits. --Philo

11:47, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the extinction of Homo Erectus needs to be expanded on. This page doesn't even give an approximate extinction date (70KA). This is partuclarly relevent as it the extinction of the species is asscoiated with the Toba Catastrophe. I would edit myself, but i am a geologist not an anthropologist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.86.33.33 (talk) 14:32, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Feel free to edit this yourself -- no expertise needed. But you do need to cite an acceptable source for the information. I believe that Erectus was widely distributed geographically, so I don't understand how the localized Toba eruption could cause their extinction. Also, I saw some recent research which showed continuity of culture through the Toba eruption, suggesting it wasn't as devastating as originally thought. TimidGuy (talk) 14:57, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Java Man

I just did some cleanup of the related Java Man article, but it still needs a lot more work. I'm suspicious of the references attributed to Lubenow (not an anthropologist, as the article earlier implied), and I deleted a sentence "quoted" from a Time magazine article that never appeared in the article. MrDarwin 14:04, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Picture

An artist's conception of H. erectus

I have some problems with the drawing in the article. For one thing the rolled lips. Aren't they a more advanced feature of modern humans? Look at a picture of a chimpanzee. They have thin lips. Steve Dufour 14:12, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and removed the picture. There is no reason to think that Homo erectus looked like that at all. The skull which is shown at the top of the page would not fit into that head. Steve Dufour 14:32, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I see the picture has now been removed from a couple of other articles. I didn't think it was a bad picture, just not good enough for this article -- which would have made it the main source of information on Homo erectus's appearance for English speaking Internet users. (p.s. I also don't think they had "worry lines." :-) )Steve Dufour 15:05, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How Do You Know This?

You say that they were not capable of producing sounds of a complexity comparable to human speech. With only fossils, how do you know this? It seems to me there is no way to prove this. Please explain your reasoning for this.

[edit] New pic

Hi guys, I’m currently working on a painting for H. erectus I was wondering if its good enough for the article. It a work in progress, it’s a bit hairless, the final would be coloured. Early humans aren’t really my thing so any pointers will be appreciated. Also it will be nude (currently no genitals are present)….what are wikipedias’ rules on nudity. I could always fudge the lighting an darken that area of necessary. [1]. thanks. Steveoc 86 (talk) 14:29, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

......well a new version if anyones interested......[2]. Steveoc 86 (talk) 00:57, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Nicely done. What are you basing it on? I see your an experienced paleontological artist, so no doubt you've studied the skull and skeletal proportions, etc. Why no clothing? If I remember correctly, the evidence from the DNA studies of a particular kind of lice suggest a date when modern humans began wearing clothing, and I believe it was earlier than Cro-Magnon. I read about it in Nicholas Wade's Before the Dawn, but a friend has borrowed my book, so I can't look it up at the moment. TimidGuy (talk) 01:26, 27 November 2007 (UTC) Oops. Sorry about that. I also track the Cro-Magnon article and got that confused with this article on Erectus, so comments about clothing don't apply. TimidGuy (talk) 01:29, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, it’s based of what I could find atomically, as for clothing….not much thought went into that… I did it for [3] . The guy behind that site said nothing about it. A lot of what I read said there’s no direct evidence for clothing and no one so far has mentioned anything about that….It could be a really hot day ;). Steveoc 86 (talk) 01:43, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Ive uploaded it to the commons

Steveoc 86 (talk) 13:46, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Xuchang skull

Is the skull just found in Xuchang from H. erectus? Badagnani (talk) 23:28, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Citation, please

An editor inserted the following without citation. Please supply a reliable source for the claim. Durova^Charge! 23:04, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Many scientist including Evolutionist, have accepted "java man" and other Homo Eructus beings as a false human ancestor. Due to fact that Chinesse scientist built the Homo Eructus using Human and Ape fossils, and was proven to be so, it has been denied it's place in the Evolutionary train, which still has yet to come out with any solid evidences of a Human intermediate.