Homo erectus (meaning "upright man," from the Latin ērĭgĕre, "to put up, set upright") is an extinct species of hominid that lived from the end of the Pliocene epoch to the later Pleistocene, about 1.3 to 1.8 million years ago. The species originated in Africa and spread as far as India, China and Java. There is still disagreement on the subject of the classification, ancestry, and progeny of H. erectus, with two major alternative hypotheses: ere...
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Homo erectus (meaning "upright man," from the Latin ērĭgĕre, "to put up, set upright") is an extinct species of hominid that lived from the end of the Pliocene epoch to the later Pleistocene, about 1.3 to 1.8 million years ago. The species originated in Africa and spread as far as India, China and Java. There is still disagreement on the subject of the classification, ancestry, and progeny of H. erectus, with two major alternative hypotheses: erectus may be another name for Homo ergaster, and therefore the direct ancestor of later hominids such as Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo sapiens; or it may be an Asian species distinct from African ergaster.
The first theory is that H. erectus migrated from Africa during the Early Pleistocene, possibly as a result of the operation of the Saharan pump, around 2.0 million years ago, and dispersed throughout much of the Old World. Fossilized remains 1.8 to 1 million years old have been found in Africa (e.g., Lake Turkana and...
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