Homo antecessor is an extinct human species…
1355661 BCE to 1106830 BCE
Homo antecessor is an extinct human species (or subspecies) that lived between 1.2 million and 800,000 years ago. It was first identified by Eudald Carbonell, Juan Luis Arsuaga, and J. M. Bermúdez de Castro.
One of the earliest known human species in Europe, H. antecessor is thought to have followed a developmental trajectory similar to Homo sapiens, based on tooth eruption patterns—though likely at a faster pace.
Distinctive anatomical features of H. antecessor include:
- A protruding occipital bun,
- A low forehead, and
- The absence of a strong chin.
Some of its skeletal remains are almost indistinguishable from those of the 1.5-million-year-old Turkana Boy, a fossil attributed to Homo ergaster.
To date, the only known fossils of H. antecessor have been discovered at two sites in the Sierra de Atapuerca region of northern Spain: Gran Dolina and Sima del Elefante.
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The archaeological site of Xihoudu in Shanxi Province is the earliest recorded use of fire by Homo erectus, which is dated 1.27 million years ago.
The excavations at Yuanmou and later Lantian show early habitation.
Dated to over one million years old, it is the oldest skeletal find of its kind and provides a link between hominids and the earliest anatomically modern humans.
It is believed that the section of the Danakil Depression in Eritrea was also a major player in terms of human evolution, and may contain other traces of evolution from Homo erectus hominids to anatomically modern humans.
Eighty fossils of six individuals that may have belonged to the species Homo antecessor will be found in 1994 and 1995 in Spain’s Atapuerca Mountains.
Numerous examples of cuts where the flesh had been flensed from the bones indicate that H. antecessor could have practiced cannibalism.
The best-preserved fossil of Homo antecessor is a maxilla that belonged to a ten-year-old individual found in Spain.
Based on paleomagnetic measurements, it is thought to be older than seven hundred and eighty thousand to eight hundred and fifty seven thousand years ago.
With a brain averaging one thousand cubic centimeters in volume. H. antecessor is about one point eight to one point six meters meters (five to six feet) tall, and males weigh roughly ninety kilograms (two hundred pounds).
Their brain sizes are roughly one thousand to eleven hundred and fifty cubic centimeters, smaller than the thirteen hundred and fifty cubic centimeter average found in modern humans.
Due to its scarcity, very little more is known about the physiology of H. antecessor, yet it is likely to have been more robust than H. heidelbergensis.
According to Juan Luis Arsuaga, one of the co-directors of the excavation in Burgos, H. antecessor might have been right-handed, a trait that makes the species different from the other apes.
This hypothesis is based on tomography techniques.
Arsuaga also claims that the frequency range of audition is similar to H. sapiens, which makes him believe that H. antecessor used a symbolic language and was able to reason.
The cave of Šandalja near Pula/Pola bears evidence of the presence of Homo erectus from about one million years BP, the earliest traces of human life in this part of Europe.
Genetic studies suggest that the functional DNA of modern humans and Homo neanderthalensis diverged five hundred thousand years before the present time.
Similarly, the few specimens of Homo rhodesiensis have also occasionally been classified as a subspecies, but this is not widely accepted.
The analysis indicated that modern humans, Neanderthals, and the Denisova hominin last shared a common ancestor around one million years ago and that this new hominin species was the result of an early migration out of Africa, distinct from the later out-of-Africa migrations associated with Neanderthals and modern humans, but also distinct from the earlier African exodus of Homo erectus.
The estimated time of divergence between Denisovans and Neanderthals is six hundred and forty thousand years ago.
That between both these groups and modern Africans is eight hundred and four thousand years ago.
The divergence of the Denisova mtDNA may result either from the persistence of a lineage purged from the other branches of humanity through genetic drift or else an introgression from an older hominin lineage.
The so-called Peking Man, discovered in 1923-27 at Zhoukoudian, near Beijing, is perhaps the most famous specimen of Homo erectus found in China.
More recently, the finds have been dated from roughly five hundred thousand years ago, although a new 26Al/10Be dating suggests the remains may be as much as six hundred and eighty thousand to seven hundred and eighty thousand years old.
A huge length of time, it sees many changes in the environment, encompassing several glacial and interglacial periods that greatly affect human settlement in the region.
Providing dating for this distant period is difficult and contentious.
The inhabitants of the region at this time are bands of hunter-gatherers who roam northern Europe following herds of animals, or who support themselves by fishing.
Recent (2006) scientific evidence regarding mitochondrial DNA sequences from ancient and modern Europe has shown a distinct pattern for the different time periods sampled in the course of the study.
Despite some limitations regarding sample sizes, the results were found to be non-random.
As such, the results indicate that, in addition to populations in Europe expanding from southern refugia after the last glacial maximum (especially the Franco-Cantabrian region), evidence also exists for various northern refugia.
Southern and eastern Britain at this time are linked to continental Europe by a wide land bridge allowing humans to move freely.
The current position of the English Channel is a large river flowing westwards and fed by tributaries that will later become the Thames and Seine.
Reconstructing this ancient environment has provided clues to the route first visitors took to arrive at what was then a peninsula of the Eurasian continent.
There is evidence from bones and flint tools found in coastal deposits near Happisburgh in Norfolk and Pakefield in Suffolk that a species of Homo was present in what is now Britain around seven hundred thousand years ago.
The Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) sees many changes in the environment, encompassing several glacial and interglacial periods that greatly affect human settlement.
In addition to populations in Europe expanding from southern refugia (especially the Franco-Cantabrian region) after the last glacial maximum, evidence also exists for various northern refugia.
Southern and eastern Britain are linked to continental Europe at this time by a wide land bridge allowing bands of hunter-gatherers to move freely, following herds of animals, or supporting themselves by fishing.
The current position of the English Channel is a large river flowing westwards and fed by tributaries that will later become the Thames and Seine.
Cranial capacity has again doubled within the Homo genus from H. habilis to an archaic Homo species called Homo heidelbergensis by six hundred thousand years ago.
The cranial capacity of H. heidelbergensis overlaps with the range found in modern humans.
Sites such as Boxgrove in Sussex illustrate the later arrival in the archaeological record of H. heidelbergensis around five hundred thousand years years ago.
Homo heidelbergensis is the second human wave to be pumped from Africa into the Middle East and Western Europe.
These early peoples make Acheulean flint tools (hand axes) and hunt the large native mammals of the period.
They are thought to have driven elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotamuses over the tops of cliffs or into bogs to kill them more easily.
These kill sites, often at waterholes where animals would gather to drink, were interpreted up until the 1970s as being where Acheulean tool users killed game, butchered their carcasses, and then discarded the tools they had used.
Since the advent of zooarchaeology, which has placed greater emphasis on studying animal bones from archaeological sites, this view has changed.
Many of the animals at these kill sites have been found to have been killed by other predator animals, so it is likely that humans of the period supplemented hunting with scavenging from already dead animals.
The extreme cold of the Anglian Stage, from four hundred and seventy-eight thousand to four hundred and twenty-four thousand years ago, is likely to have driven humans out of Britain altogether and the region does not appear to have been occupied again until the ice receded during the Hoxnian Stage.
Homo ergaster (or erectus) makes large stone hand-axes out of flint and quartzite, at first quite rough and later "retouched" by additional, more subtle strikes at the sides of the flakes during the period known as the Acheulean, from seven hundred thousand to three hundred thousand years before the present.