The Ancients - Homo Erectus

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

Before modern humans walked the earth, and even before the Neanderthals, Homo Erectus dominated the plains of Africa. Eventually migrating across the land, with evidence of their existence being found in locations like Java, Homo Erectus survived for 2 million years. But how did they succeed where others failed, and become the most wide spread human species on earth at this time?In this episode, Tristan is joined by Professor John McNabb from the University of Southampton, to explore the fascinating history of Homo Erectus. Looking at a number of tools they used to survive, including a pre-historic Swiss Army Knife, what can the archaeology tell us about the evolution of humankind and can we learn anything from our distant ancestors?For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code ANCIENTS for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription.To download, go to Android > or Apple store >

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast, well, super excited for this one. We've recorded it not too long ago so it's also fresh in my mind too. We're delving deep into human prehistory once more, before the time of modern humans, of homo sapiens, before the time of Neanderthals. We're talking about an extraordinary human species, the longest lived human species that we know of so far. A species that lived for roughly two million years and

spread out to areas as far away as the islands of Indonesia. I am of course talking about Homo erectus, upright man. In this podcast we're going to be explaining all about Homo erectus. We're going to be doing a deep delve into its story with a leading expert, a leading professor, none other than Southampton University's Professor John McNabb, Mack. Mack is a legend when it comes to paleoanthropology, deep human prehistory, we're talking now. He is a legend. As soon as I announced on Twitter that we'd interviewed Mac all about this, some eminent anthropologists replied very, very quickly saying what an amazing guy he is, what an absolute legend he is. And they're absolutely right. It was such

a privilege to interview Mac all about this, to hear about his passion for all things Homo erectus he brought out a number of replica skulls of Homo erectus some other bones too discovered as well as a few hand axes these main stone tools that were used by Homo erectus and what this can tell us about the cognitive thinking of Homo erectus why they're so important in the story of our human evolution. You're going to absolutely love this one. I can guarantee it. It's a fascinating, fascinating topic. His storytelling is just brilliant. So without further ado, to talk all things Homo erectus, here's Mac. Mac, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. Glad to be here. Now, and for a topic like this, we've got this array of replica skulls and tools

in front of us today to talk about Homo erectus. And correct me if I'm mistaken, but this is the most successful, the longest lived human species that we know of to date? Yes. The oldest one that we probably have is from South Africa. That's about 2 million years in age, maybe a little bit older than that. And we think now that Homo erectus in one shape or another lasts down until maybe 100,000 years in Indonesia or even perhaps less. So it's a very, very long-lived species,

a very successful adaptation. That is, so it's roughly two million years and Homo sapiens have been around for well modern Homo sapiens 60, 70 thousand years so not even close. The very earliest of our own species where you can see something that is recognizably human is probably about 300,000. But then we start to see skulls which are identical to modern human skulls at about 200,000. Fully modern humans behaving the way we do, thinking the way we do, having abstract symbolic thought, that's a little bit later again. But this is still, with Homo erectus, is this still a significant step forward almost in the story of human evolution. Yeah, it's definitely. I think it's fair to say Homo erectus is a game changer because with Homo erectus we begin to see the first modern human-like body plan.

So the proportions of the limbs, the proportions of limbs to body, the torso, the pelvis and things like that. of limbs to body, the torso, the pelvis and things like that. You would recognise them as being more or less the same as ours and not anything that would stand out as being dramatically different if you met one in the street. Now, this might seem a silly question, seeing what we've got in front of us, but I'm going to ask it anyway. So what sorts of evidence do we have for people like yourself wanting to learn more about Homo erectus?

Primarily, it's bones, bones and skulls. And those are the things that will tell us the most, not only about the kind of adaptation that Homo erectus was, about how successful it would be in living in its environment or coping with new and different environments when it was on the move, but also things like behaviour. We rely on skulls and bones of the body to tell us things about similarities with ourselves, the kind of strengths that they might have, where the body had most of its strength, the thickness of the bones,

and the walls of the bones will tell us that. But there are other things like footprint trails. There's a one and a half million year old footprint trail from East Africa, which is almost certainly, given the time that it's dated to, a whole series of homo erectus moving together. And they suggest from the depth the people sank into the mud as they walked along, from the shape and the size of the feet. And it may have been groups of males moving through a landscape together. So people have interpreted that as perhaps male hunting parties or something like that so there's actually quite a variety and then of course there are the stone tools as well which can give us information on

technical competency we can look to see how similar a group of tools are to each other if they're found in the same place and that might tell us about whether or not they are learning from each other if there are schools of being taught how to nap, similarities in the approach to napping, etc. How are they learning? There's a whole variety of things that we can actually look at to give us information about erectines. Well, we will definitely get into those tools because they look absolutely incredible. But, Mac, let's go back to the beginning of the story of Homo erectus. Set the scene, so let's say roughly two million years ago, maybe earlier than that

But whereabouts in the world are we talking with homonyms at this time? And what do we think precedes the emergence of homo erectus? So we'd be in Africa We'd be in East Africa and South Africa in East Africa. We'd be on the open savannahs in South Africa. We're on the veld which is a sort of open savanna, but also in conjunction with caves as well. Although they're not probably living in caves, the caves in South Africa tend to be vertical shafts down into a chamber underneath. But around the top, you get water. You get pools of water and things like that. You'd get trees, small animals and stuff. And these would be places where the erectings would be going to because it would provide safety, but it also provide resources like food, like water and things like that.

So we're in very much an open type of environment. We're looking at a creature which is living in a group. We're looking at a creature that is living in a social group. So it's a social animal. They have to cooperate with each other to hunt, and hunting is probably a part of what they do. They have to cooperate with each other in order to find resources, to find the kinds of stones that they want to make their tools out of. They'll have to cooperate with each other in defense and things like that. So they have to be a cooperative group in order to survive within these landscapes. One or two by themselves wouldn't last very long. People talk about maybe 25, 30 in a group or perhaps even more in some cases.

Interesting. And we've got an example or a few examples of these predecessors right here at the end. So what are these types of humans? So when I was a student way back in the day, this was considered to be the ancestor of Homo erectus. So this is called Homo habilis. It's a small creature, stands possibly maybe that high off the ground as a full adult. You can see it's quite gracile. Its teeth are quite small. That's a bit of a giveaway for sort of a human kind of adaptations. Brain size is about 600 maybe cubic centimetres. Our own varies anywhere from 12 to 1300 cubic centimetres or more. So it's clearly not anywhere near our range as yet. And as I said, when I was a student, the belief was that this was the ancestor to Homo erectus

and that the whole species would gradually change by adaptation to become the erectines. Since then, we now know that's not the case. After discoveries in the 1970s, we now believe what they call cladogenesis is the appropriate way, which is basically you have a main line and then daughter species coming off who under adaptation change to become a new creature, and then the new form and the original form going parallel together. So at some point, there would have been a last common ancestor. So this is Homo erectus and this is Homo habilis.

They probably had a common ancestor but we also know nowadays that they lived at the same time in more or less the same landscapes in East Africa, probably adapted to individual niches, but they may well have come across each other in, you know, encounters, things like that. And you can see there's some significant differences between erectus and habilis. Yes, just describing it for our listeners at the moment, because, of course, habilis, you can just see a massive, a size difference in the size of their cranium in particular. The eyes look quite similar, big sockets, the nose, the teeth too. But it's the cranium size, which is so much bigger with homo erectus, isn't it?

big round. But it's the cranium size, which is so much bigger with Homo erectus, isn't it? Yep. So here we're dealing with a brain size of 900, maybe up to 1,000 cubic centimetres in some cases. There have been significant changes. Not only the size of the skull is now bigger,

but we will see, as I was saying, the very first example of a body plan that we would recognise as our own, as a part of this. So this is a creature that can move through the landscape as we would. It's probably a runner, so it may well be involved in persistent hunting, so they would injure the game and follow it until the game just collapses and then butcher it. It has an external nose, so for the first time we think a nose like we would recognise it is here, which in all probability little Haberlis may not well have had.

It's still quite prognathic, which is the muslin-ness here. So there would be differences that you would appreciate immediately, despite the overall similarity. And one thing that's quite important, can you see the eyebrow ridge? Yes, and it's a very thick eyebrow ridge too. Very thick eyebrow ridge, very well built, and it's got a double arch.

Now we'll see that in later examples and in descendants as well, that persists through. We obviously don't have that. And it is so interesting, Mac, when you look at that, and this is just the start of the Homo erectus story, we're still in Africa at this point, but even just visually seeing that, the size difference between Homo erectus and Homo habilis, you start to realise how big a step forward this almost is in this human evolution. But you can also start to realise why the one on the right, the smaller Homo habilis, died out, went extinct, compared to the much bigger Homo erectus. Yes, but the problem there is that we don't know why they do become extinct. erectus? Yes, but the problem there is that we don't know why they do become extinct. So in a great many cases, why species don't persist, we don't know. Is it that conditions change? Clearly

they live at around the same time with each other. As I said, they may be in the same landscapes with each other, but adapted to in particular little niches within those landscapes. Why does one fail? Does one niche no longer persist and they can't adapt? We just don't know. It's one of those, why species arise is a question, why species die is an equally important question. Absolutely. Well, fair enough, fair enough. And you say, this is the main evidence you have to try and learn more about it, isn't it? Well, we've looked at the craniums, but you haven't just got craniums here. You've got these other parts of the homo erectus skeleton too. Sure.

What have we got right here in front of us? Okay. So this is the pelvic girdle of homo erectus. It belongs to this skull. It's called the nariakatomi boy. He was maybe 12 years old. There's some discussion about that. A big lad standing really quite high, quite thick set,

quite well built. A very full and complete skeleton when it was found, not totally complete, but a lot of it was still present. And what we see when we look at the pelvic girdle is that it is pretty much the same shape as ours. It's a bit smaller, but it's got that same dish effect that we have. So we know from looking at the pelvis

that it's basically the same as ours it has the same broad shape it has the same iliac blades it has the same dished character to it and we know from the articulation of the femur the upper leg bone that it articulates in the same way that ours does and this is a classic ball and socket joint so you're holding a femur bone there as well this is the upper leg bone the femur that ours does. And this is a classic ball and socket joint. So you're holding a femur bone there as well. Yep, this is the upper leg bone, the femur that fits into the socket. And it gives us a strong indication that they were able to move

in pretty much the same way that we're able to move. So that's how we know that they're a runner. So that's how we know that they're able to walk and that they're fully bipedal. They are what they call an obligate biped. That is their absolute normal mode of locomotion. There's no tree climbing or anything left, which maybe habilis had a little bit of as part of its behavioural repertoire. So these are really critical parts of helping us to understand

the behaviour and the potential behaviours for erectus as well. And is that important when we go to the next really big question concerning homo erectus, which is to where in the world these people, these humans spread to? Yeah. One of the big questions has always been, which was the first hominin to leave Africa and move out into the rest of the world? And it's always been taken as a yardstick that it was going to be Homo erectus. Why? Because Homo erectus is the first proper biped. So it was the first one able to actually move out. And there's been a lot of discussion and debate about this. There are some very early homo erectus examples found from Indonesia and Java, for example.

Java? Yeah. So this is from a site called Sangiran. It's a very, very famous skull. If we compare it to the African early one, you can see there are some distinct differences. This is a much longer skull. This is a much rounder skull.

Still got the double arched eyebrows though. So there are strong similarities. We know this, which is why we know it is Hamaractus, but it appears in Java. And there's some question about whether it's 1.6 or maybe 1.3 million years in age. Doesn't really matter. It's a very, very early migrant.

And once they're in Java, they stay. But we find Hum erectus in China, for example. There are a number of really good sites. The famous Peking Man site, the Zao Kow Diem site, is another good example. It's a species which clearly has the capacity to move and to move fairly quickly. We've even got sites now, there's no bones associated, they're archaeological sites, so they've got stone tools, which is suggesting, for example, in China that there are clear

evidences of presence at maybe 1.8, 1.9 million years, and some of the most recent evidence is actually suggesting 2 million years, which is bang on the time we see them first emerge in Africa. So there's all sorts of questions now being asked. Are they a very rapidly dispersing species? Some people are starting to ask, is there a smaller-bodied, smaller-brained hominin which predates Erectus and moves out earlier, and erectus follows? Or is erectus, in the very earliest stages of its evolution, and we don't

have those stages yet, before 2 million, still migrating? Is it still the first one to move out? And what we see in front of us are just slightly later developments which then follow on again. And these are questions we just, as yet, we don't have any answers for. Such huge periods of time. Oh, massive, yeah. It deepens prehistory. If I might, actually. Yeah, please do.

Because just having a look at this particular skull compared to the one you showed earlier, as you mentioned, this almost evolution of Hummer erectus itself, that skull, it's not as long as this one. This one has a much, well not thinner, but a longer cranium at the back. As you say, those very thick eyebrow lines are still there. Yeah. But you can still see the difference. You can see how round, look at the rounded at the back here, this one is, and how pointy and pinched this one is. It's pinched, isn't it? Yes. How interesting. And big dents in the back too,

because that's just how it was discovered. too. That's just those bits of bones that are missing that they never actually found. And that's just once more, it adds to the detail of Homo erectus. And therefore we found them in Java, we found them in Africa. Have we found them in other parts of the world too? Well China. There may well be examples in India, although there's some debate about what those are. There's been suggestions that they've been found in Eastern Europe, possibly in Turkey, and they may well be there. Ones in Western Europe, at the moment, I don't think people are accepting those as erectines. They're probably later the successor to erectus, which is called Homo heidelbergensis. So yes, in that sense, not only is it alive for a very long

time, but it's also very, very geographically widespread. So it's an immensely successful adaptation. And part of the trick for erectus, part of it's kind of the key to its success, is that it's not specialised. It's actually a generalist. Generalists can adapt to anything. If change occurs, they can adapt to things quickly because they're not channeled down one particular adaptational route. They can shift to this kind of hunting or that kind of hunting, or they can take on board more vegetable produce in their diet, or they can go for more meat. If things get really cold, they maybe have strategies for that. If things get dry, they maybe have strategies for that. The fact that they're not so specifically adapted may well be the secret of their success. And possibly, since you brought that up, the demise of little Homo habilis could be perhaps that they were a bit too specialised into a specific niche. And when the niche changed,

they didn't have the broader adaptability that the erecting's had. And that would explain the diversity and how they're able to thrive in such a diverse wealth of environments across the world. What's also so interesting about that, Mac, is how critical, therefore, to all of that,

do you think, is this massive increase in the cranium size, in the brain size of Homo erectus? It provides a hugely important factor to the adaptive success, if you like. Cognitively, this is part of the evolution that will come eventually to us. And somewhere along the line, in some way or other, erectus must be a part of Homo sapiens history. What does a big brain give you or bigger brain give you? It gives you more ability to adapt, it gives you more intelligent solutions to things, you can problem solve on a much wider scale using a lot more potential from the environment around you.

Animals with smaller brains tend to be quite channeled in terms of their adaptation, this kind of specialism, over-specialism. The bigger brained, obviously, then the more possibilities they have for being flexible. A generalist who is flexible is a species that's going to have a better chance. So let's keep on this cognitive behaviour a bit longer, because alongside these artefacts, the skulls but other bones as well, what sorts of archaeology is normally found alongside Homo erectus sites? Erectus, we believe, is the inventor of the hand axe. Right, look at that.

These are slightly later ones but they'll serve the purposes that we want. So what you have here is what they call a bifacial tool. So it's been napped or it's been shaped on two faces. And napping is just bashing it off. Napping is the process of taking flakes off in a controlled manner to impose a shape on the stone itself. They are one of the most critical inventions in all of human history. Without these, there'd be no phones or space shuttles or cars or anything like this. This is the mobile tool for a very mobile hunter. You can carry this around with you. You can resharpen it just by

finding a pebble and putting a new edge on it if it's become blunt. You can butcher with it. You can fillet meat. You can scrape the flesh off a skin. You can carry it around with you if you don't know where the hunt is going to take you. You don't know if the hunt is going to take you or the animal that you've wounded and you're chasing perhaps is going to wander off into a place where there's no stone. So you can't make tools. In other words, this will allow you to do whatever you need to do.

You're carrying your tool to the job rather than little habilis, which tended to live in areas where stone was going to be around. So they stayed where the job was going to be, if you like. This is carrying the tool to the job. That's a big change in terms of behaviour. And you need a bigger brain for that kind of flexibility and adaptability When it's so interesting because looking at it there this just looks like a big stone, but that's the Paleolithic Swiss Army knife Is it yeah, that's what they call it. Yeah, but carefully

Crafted by creating those flakes to keep that sharp edge to re when it's blunt to resharpen as well carried from place to place So I'm guessing therefore, some of these hand axes that you find, can you tell from the stone that these hand axes, they didn't originate there, they've been ported, they've been carried from far, far away. The rock type is different from the one that you find at that place.

One of the things that's really critical about these as well, and it goes with this bigger brain and what does a you know, a larger cognitive ability actually mean, is with habilis, the culture, stone tool culture that they make is called the old one, and they take pebbles and they make sharp edges on them, they pick up the flakes and they use the sharp edges to cut and things like that, but the amount of shaping that Habbalist does is limited. This shape does not exist in nature. This shape is not suggested by the rock that you're napping. You have to carry this shape in your head. You impose the shape like a sculptor imposes shape upon the marble.

You have to impose this shape upon the rock. You have to see it, envision it. You have to hold it in your mind's eye, if you like, in the memory of your mind's eye and carry it all the way through. And you learn that from your social group. You pick it up socially, you carry it socially, and you pass it on socially. So this is something which is a real game changer.

Again, so it's another thing, you know, why the erectines are such an important part of our evolutionary story. We see the beginning of something in terms of cognitive understanding, which we take for granted every day. We don't even bother thinking about it. We see it first of all in the hand axe, a shape in the stone that isn't actually there, but they learn that shape from those around them, first of all, in the hand axe. A shape in the stone that isn't actually there, but they learn that shape from those around them, from their elders, from their peers and things like that, and then impose it themselves. Oh, interesting.

It's almost like, I guess, perhaps it's a pretty bad example, but making a paper plane or something like that. You have that idea in your mind already, similar kind of thing with the stone tools. They have that in their minds. They know the end product. The paper doesn't suggest the plane. In my case, my dad taught me how to make paper aeroplanes.

So I learned socially from the world around me. So the plane paper does not suggest the plane, but a mentor taught me how to make the plane. Well, here you go. It's exactly the same thing. Interesting. And so is this therefore the theory of mind idea? Well, yes,

that comes into it. So theory of mind is the ability to understand that people have a perspective on the world, which could be similar to your own, but may also be different from your own. In other words, it's understanding the world from somebody else's perspective. So you and I, again, we do this automatically. It's a part of our ability to deal with people. It's part of our ability to live in a complex, modern human social way. And we give it no second thought. We just do it automatically. Cognitively, it's actually a really,

really powerful and big thing. If you want to make this, if you want to see the shape of the tool inside the stone that doesn't suggest the shape, you have to learn that from another. In which case, you have to understand what the other person's perspective is. You have to understand that the other person is somebody like yourself, who has a mind such as yours, who has a certain set of processes or abilities to conceive things in the same way that you do. Now, whether it's actually full theory of mind remains a matter of some debate. What do I mean by full theory of mind? Full theory of mind is what they call false belief states, which is, I understand that you and I have a similar way of the world works,

but you're doing something that I wouldn't do. Therefore, I think probably you're doing it wrong, or you're doing it certainly differently. And the understanding that there are different ways of doing things, seeing things from perspectives other than your own, that may be very different from your own, is full theory of mind, which is a modern human thing, a very modern human thing. How far this incorporates something like false belief states is very difficult to say, but it certainly bespeaks the fact that you have to understand the perspective of the person who's teaching you in order to be able to produce what it is that they want you to do. And you have to learn this socially. It's very, very unlikely you would hit upon accidentally

the idea of a hand axe in the stone by napping. So I wanted to bring up that theory of mind idea right now. Whilst we're still with the hand axes, before we talk about how effective they were and then going on to other things, because you do have three different hand axes in front and you can see a lot of variation in them. One of them looks like it can fit in the palm of your hand,

looks quite very nicely made as well. The other two, much bigger, and they also look quite visually different too. They come in different sizes, they come in different shapes, they may well have very different uses. There are types from Africa, and we find them a little bit in Europe as well, called cleavers, which don't have this gradual coming together of a point.

They have very flat, almost axe-like blades, and they must have a different function. But what that function is, we're not really sure. This one, as you can see, has a cutting edge almost all the way around. This is a European example, it's not an African one. With this, I could cut into the belly of an animal, I could then begin to get in to deflesh with it, I can scrape. You can do all sorts of things. As you said, there's a Swiss army idea of a multifunctionality of these things.

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And I'm Matt Lewis. From surviving everyday life in the Middle Ages to dynasty-shattering events, Gone Medieval is the place to quench your thirst for history. Subscribe now to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. But is it almost like, let's say, cutlery in modern day, with like a knife, a fork and a spoon. They're all bits of cutlery. These are all hand axes,

and they may have had several purposes. But when they were making them, they knew that there were different designs, purposely built, well, constructed, made, for different parts of their hunter-gatherer society, their lifestyle. It's a reasonable assumption that a radically different shape

would be a different purpose, would be used for a different job. We've never actually had proof of that, but it's not a bad assumption. Particularly ones where you've got very, very long, thin, pointy, you know, almost like spearhead shapes. It would come down to a very fine point, as opposed to these much flatter and more oval ones. Let me show you this one. Yes is a much smaller one. But if you're to look at the edge, unlike this one, which has a straight edge, this one has a twist. It's made in an S shape, a reverse S shape on the other side. These we find in particular sites which probably post-date Homer Erectus, which are part of the successor, this Homer Heidelbergensis, but it's still part of this so-called Acherlian culture, which is what the Handax culture that Erectus invents is.

And this shows that there's a lot of variety as well. What these twists are for, we have no idea. All sorts of theories kicking around, but nobody's really sure. But it's clear that they conceive of their tools in different ways as well. It's so, so interesting. And I've got to ask, therefore, in the whole story of Homo erectus, the importance of the Acheulean axe, the hand axes for Homo erectus and other human species too. How effective really were they?

Have you tested them out at all? Yes, yes. I've done experimental work with them. There's been lots and lots of practice, butchery experiments with them, and they are really, really efficient, really effective. One of the key things is if I can show you on this one. So if you imagine you take just a very sharp edge,

which is just a straight edge, like the edge of a flake or something like that. After a while, it'll blunt. Now, because of the bifacial working, because it's been napped and turned and napped and turned, you have a slightly ragged edge, and it's slightly wavy with lots of little kinks and stuff. That actually makes a much more durable edge.

So it will last a lot longer as a cutting and butchery tools which is effectively what they are, they're butchery tools. So they are immensely effective, they are very versatile and they are almost in a sense, I'm not going to say self-replicating, but what you can do is resharpen them and you can resharpen them and you can resharpen them again. And sometimes they might even change a lot of shape in the resharpening so if you're

going off into territory where you don't know what's got out there whether there's going to be stone tools you can use you've got something you can rely on for butchery episode after butchery episode after butchery episode and remember for almost two million years homo erectus is making this it survives and succeeds happily The dominant human species is making that then evidently there's something worthwhile about it something really effective, isn't there? Yeah, we've talked about there for the increased brain size this increase this step forward in cognitive learning ability We talked about theory of mind and this idea. They're going across the world in groups and communities. So therefore, talk to me about fire making.

Do we think that at the end of the days, in these various environments, that groups of homo erectus would be gathered around, there would be a fire, some way for them to keep warm? Yes. That's a really hard one. And it's a hard one for a number of reasons. Identifying fire as a deliberately made event, you know, almost as like a tool, is very difficult. In the African savannahs, how do you distinguish a natural fire, like a wildfire event, or perhaps a lightning strike or something like that? How do you distinguish that from a fire which has been set but doesn't have a hearth and doesn't leave any kind of permanent trace? It's been very, very difficult to identify.

Over a million years in age. And there are a number of sites in East Africa and South Africa where it's been suggested but has always been deeply contentious. We're fairly sure now, or at least I think there's a consensus emerging now, that Homo heidelbergensis, the successor to Erectus, is a firemaker, though not necessarily every group is a firemaker. There are some good sites, which are much more recent than, say, a million years, 780,000 for a famous one called Geshe Benet Yaakov in

Israel, where you've almost certainly got clearly set fires. And there are other examples. There's one in South Africa called Svartkrans and there's other ones as well. There's ones even in Britain as well, which I suggest. That's a site called Beaches Pit, which clearly is a set fire because as John Gowler and his team were excavating, they were finding a series of places. It's exactly the same spot, a series of fires, one on top of each other. The statistical chances of that happening accidentally are beyond imagining. Yeah, basically. So this Heidelbergensis, bigger brained than the Erectus, so if the Erectus is around say 900 to a thousand cubic centimeters here

We're dealing with about 1250 cubic centimeters. You can see already the brain, you know, the size of the skull is bigger The brain once again, it's a much longer cranium size isn't it? Still got that nice double arch there. You can see the big eyes the nose is in there So yes in terms of fire, we normally assume fire is like some great, great big Rubicon that once we've passed, that's it. But that might not be the case because hominins, erectines, Heidelbergs have been surviving without fire quite happily for a long time. How much real difference fire makes when it comes in to begin with is open to debate. There's a lot of people who think homo erectus was the inventor of fire

and in fact were cooking quite early on. I think it's an interesting suggestion to make. There are others who would believe that it takes a while for fire to become a part of the adaptation of the species as a whole. It's so interesting because I guess another big question would therefore be

that there seems to be this common idea that with fire making therefore follows lots of social engagement and therefore perhaps the origins the development of language. So I'm guessing that's another potential idea possibility, I'm not going to say concrete, but a possibility that's with homo erectus that perhaps the first forms of human language might evolve. Yes, there has been a quite a big debate, as there is in everything with anthropology, a debate about whether or not the erectines do have. When this sky was first discovered, this is the Nariakatomi boy again, as they looked at the inside of the skull and the

impressions that the brain has made upon the inside of the skull, they noticed an area here called Broca's area. And Broca's area has always been associated with language in humans because when people have had injuries and Broca's area has been damaged, the brain injuries, people have not been able to deliver proper speech. It impairs the ability to function in terms of language. But they're also now fairly clear that you don't need to have Broca's area, essentially, because the brain can rewire. So whether or not erectus is capable of full language is debatable. There are other suggestions that even if they did have certain forms of language, it wasn't as fully developed as ours. So curiously, in

our vertebrae there is a hole, a central channel through which the spinal cord passes, but there's also a lot of muscle tissue and that muscle tissue comes out from the back and allows your ribcages to expand and contract while you breathe and make sound at the same time. You have to carry quite a lot of muscle tissue for that. The hole in the vertebrae for erectines is smaller. It can't carry as much of the muscle tissue. So consequently, whether it was able to produce sound and breathe at the same time in the same way that we produce language is an open debate. Well, I'm going to rattle your brain for some more quickfire questions around homoer erectus. They might not be quickfire.

I'm finding this so fascinating. I could ask questions for hours, but otherwise my editors will kill me. But a bit more on another part, which is always associated with more advanced cognitive behavior in these early humans. I've got to ask about art too. Now, do we think that we've found arguably the first art,

or do we have evidence of art from potentially Homo erectus? Again, it's a really contentious issue. It seems to be the only thing I'm ever saying on this interview. In my opinion, and I would really emphasise it's only my opinion, for Homo erectus, no. There are people who claim that there are small statuettes, small figurines, which are largely natural, but which have had certain features enhanced by a little bit of scraping here or a little bit of accentuation with cutting here and there, which do represent the human form. I don't find that convincing, but there are others who would. You start to really see art only with modern humans, figurative art and with representative

art as well. It's clear that Neanderthals have a sense of the abstract and it's clear that Neanderthals do produce abstract art. There have been some remarkable dating programs for abstract markings on cave walls, painted cave walls in Spain for example, which predate modern humans by maybe 20,000 years or more, which mean that these older species, pre-modern human, did have a sense of the abstract, could possibly deal in metaphor and things like that. Art and language are very, very closely tied together in a great many ways.

I don't see it in erectus personally, but there are those who would happily disagree with me. Well, there you go. Well, I'm glad you mentioned Neanderthals because I had a massively interesting, such an engaging chat with Rebecca Ragsikes about Neanderthals not too long ago. But one of the things that she also talked with Neanderthals was their diet and how the diet, it varies, it differs depending on where in the world the Neanderthals were living. In regards to what they ate, would it differ depending on where in the world these Homo erectus were based? Let's say someone living on the island of Java would be eating meat and plants, obviously something completely different to that of someone in China

or Georgia or so on and so forth. It really depends on what animals are around. It's clear that Erectus is a hunter and it's clear that they're a group hunter as well. So they will be targeting various sizes of game. In living in local areas, they will become accustomed to the movements, to the patterns of behaviour of different animals, whatever their preys are. And consequently, they will know

how to hunt different species, things like that. Meat is an important part of the diet as far as we can tell for all of the erectines no matter where in the world they are. How do we know that? Well if you look at the rib cages of Homo erectus they're barrel shaped so they're narrow, wide, narrow, which means that they have a reduced intestine, which means that the foodstuffs they're eating have a higher quality because you don't need to pass it through a long gut in order to extract all the nutrients and stuff that you need. The poorer quality diet, the longer the gut, because there needs to be more extraction. So we think that they're meat eaters and that meat is an important part of their diet, simply because compared to habilis or some of the earlier species, they don't have the kind of rib cage we would expect, which would be defending and protecting a very long, very enlarged intestine.

So meat is definitely a part of it. They'd have to have eaten some vegetables, some form of plant food as well in order to get other nutrients out. We know in Neanderthals that this is definitely the case. Mosses and grasses, possibly even some self-medicating herbs and things like that because we found evidence of them within the caves. Because the erectines are so much older and they're in hotter climates where things like that is not preserved so well it's been a lot more difficult to reproduce exactly what the diet would be but they must have had some variability in the diet that's so interesting and i guess kind of keeping on the diet a bit more but also in linking it to the

growth of a homo erectus now is it once again, this might be a thing we take for granted as modern humans, this idea that obviously when we're young, we're small, then we have a growth spurt, and then we get to a particular height, and then we kind of stay at that height, and that's fully grown. Is that a kind of similar thing do we know

with Homo erectus, that they have this, I guess they just call it the growth spurt in teenage years where they have this massive rise in their size? Let me change that one and call it life history. Right, okay. We think that the basic life history is fairly similar to our own. So for example, another thing that we can tell from the pelvis of Homo erectus is that the birth canal would not be that much different from to our own. So they're clearly giving birth to large-brained, large-headed babies. We think they mature a little bit more quickly than we do. So by the time you're a middle teenager, possibly a little bit later,

we are, as far as we're concerned, still quite young. We're not fully adult or mature yet. For an erecting, that may not have been the case. They may actually have been fully mature by that point. The reproductive cycle may have kicked in a little bit earlier. And one of the interesting things that accompanies this is there are two phases for humans which are important, which is childhood and then that early teenage phase. which is childhood and then that early teenage phase. In childhood, you learn how to engage with your social group, you learn language, you learn appropriate behaviour, things like that. You explore through play, that kind of thing. And in the teenage phase, you're learning how to be a social member of a group, how to be a contributing member of a group. If the life history was shorter and a

little bit more rapid, it would mean those phases, critical phases where culture is imposed upon the individual could have been that much shorter as well. So the capacity for culture, the capacity for more complicated culture could have been that much less because life history was a little shorter and a little quicker. And that would affect things like theory of mind as well, because you need that time to actually engage with and understand people as separate people and learn what their perspectives might be. All of these parts, these aspects of the story of Homoractus seem incredibly important as puzzle pieces in trying to figure out the whole story of this early hominin. And I guess

it's also really interesting when you also consider the context, hunter-gatherers, it's not like even when they're adolescents, when they're teenagers, even their childhood years, they have to be part of the community, they have to be butchering or whatever, they have to be contributing to make sure they survive in these areas of the world. It's all so, so fascinating. And given their success for so long, come on, Mac, you've got to let us know, what do we think ultimately happens to Homo erectus? Why do they ultimately die out? Okay.

Well, do you remember that thing I said a while back about we've changed our view of how evolution works, not from a species changing itself in its entirety across its whole geographical range, but now we have the parent group and then we have offshoots, which then can adapt and change and live alongside, perhaps, the parent populations. We believe that erectines develop into Homo heidelbergensis. For a long time, they may well have been in parallel with each other. This is in Africa.

So this is called Bodo. It's about 600,000 years old. It's one, well, in fact, I think it's the earliest clear cut Heidelberg that we've ever found in Africa. The oldest erectines we have in Africa are about a million years, maybe coming down in certain disputed specimens to 900,000 or 800,000. By about 600,000, we don't see them anymore. Although there may be one or two examples that some people agree with.

Did things change? Why would this be a more successful adaptation? Did this out-compete the parent, in a sense? Did the child do better than the adult, than mum and dad? We don't really know. All we know is that by about 600,000 in Africa, you don't see any more clear-cut, unambiguous erectings. You just find the Heidelbergs. any more clear-cut, unambiguous erectines. You just find the Heidelbergs. Perhaps they were better at being more social. Perhaps their ability to hunt, to compete, was better developed.

So we're dealing here, as I said, with a brain size of maybe 1,200, 1,250 cubic centimetres. So, you know, at least two to 300 cubic centimetres bigger than the parent erectines. We don't know. So for the Javan species down at about 100,000, why did they last longer there than anywhere else in the world? We don't know. It is so interesting, your Homo hydrogensis, where, as we've mentioned already, the cranium size is larger than that even of a Homo erectus. And that is, Homo erectus's cranium size is a big

step forwards there. But I'm now holding the Java Homo erectus, and that is, Homo erectus' cranium size is a big step forwards there. But I'm now holding the Java Homo erectus, the one that seems to live on in this area of the world longer than elsewhere. The cranium size of this, you could almost mistake it for actually being a Homo hudabagensis, because it actually looks very, very similar, which is fascinating in its own way,

how this Homo erectus seems to survive longer and adapt to look more like a Homo hirtebegensis further west. Yes, there has to be changes in the cranium. There won't have been that many changes in the post-cranial skeleton, in other words, from the neck down. There will be changes, they're bigger, they're more robust again, but it's really in teeth and skulls that we see the real differences and those again must be adaptations. Why those adaptations occurring? What makes an even bigger brain more robust and more successful? We don't really know. Well last in front of us we have got over here a much much smaller skull

but it's this end of the table which as we laid out beforehand suggests that it's actually further on the evolutionary line. So why do we now have here a much smaller skull? What is this skull's story in relation to Homo erectus? So this is Homo floresiensis and this is something that we never expected to see. And when it was first discovered there was a huge amount of controversy as to even whether it was a real hominin species or not. But now most people would agree that it clearly is. It's found on the island of Flores

in the Indonesian archipelago. The species, we think, dates from round about 50,000 or so at its latest, going back possibly as much as 700,000 or more, even possibly more, because they found a number of sites on Flores now where they think Homo floresiensis was present. It's sometimes called the Hobbit. The Bilbo Baggins. Yeah, didn't have hairy feet or anything like that. I don't encourage my students to actually call it the Hobbit, but they always do. It's something we didn't expect because it doesn't look like anything that should be around at the same time.

You know, as I said, say 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 years, something like that. It's a stone toolmaker as well. Its brain size is actually smaller than all Homo habilis. Oh, Homo habilis. Oh, Homo habilis? Yeah. Right. Its brain size is closer to another group of hominins called Australopithecines. Right, so that's really early. Yeah, which is 2.5, 3, 4 million, depending on which species you want to be talking about.

The question that has arisen about this is, is it an example of Homo erectus moving down the island chain, inhabiting islands, and then becoming isolated on those islands? Because there's a phenomenon that occurs when you are isolated on an island, is that you will shrink down, because you require less resources, you require less richness from the environment around. The smaller you are, the less energy you use, therefore the less energy you need out of the environment around you. It's a strategy for surviving in areas where you've got no chance of leaving, like an island. Is this an erectus, or the result of an erectus moving that became trapped on Flores and could not actually escape?

And the result is this, or, and this is something that's starting to appear in the literature more and more now, is this, a species of hominin, which was always this size anyway, it's not a shrunk down one, but left Africa before Erectus actually evolved. A small brained, small bodied hominin,

able to move very quickly that left Africa and spread throughout the world, explaining many of these very, very early sites that we find perhaps in China, that we find in Indonesia as well. And in fact, erectus is not the first migrant. There is something else out there. So this is an idea that's being played around now in the literature and it's a very interesting idea. It is so, so interesting. I'm glad we got there and particularly on the islands of Indonesia today We were the islands back then were these hummer right most of them most of them were there are very deep channels in between There's another species

Again, so we didn't expect to find this one and nobody believed it to start with and then they found another one Which is different which is on the island of Luzon, and it's called Homo luzonensis. It's very similar. It's very small. It could possibly be another example of erectus dwarfing down. However, it's sufficiently different not to be fluoresiensis. So clearly something crazy is going on in those islands and another important feature of these Indonesian examples is in between Flores and the next island to the West which to be honest with I cannot remember what it's called There is a very deep channel a very deep channel. This would have to have made a water crossing I was literally thinking that yeah, how would they get to these islands? They had to have made water crossings Some people have argued that erectus is able had to have made water crossings. Some people have argued that Erectus is able to make quite long water crossings. And that's a matter, again, of great contention. You

know, like everything in this interview, I always start with, well, we don't really know, or people are really arguing and discussing about this. But there is a body of thought that believes that Erectus is able to move over water quite long distances, either on rafts or, you know, making floating mats of vegetation or something. Nobody really knows. There are arguments, for example, on the island of Crete, there are suggestions that there are really, really early examples of stone tools at a point at which only something like a rectus could be around, although it may be Homo heidelbergensis, we don't really know, but Crete has always been an island and it's always been quite away from the nearest islands and from the Greek mainland as well. And the suggestion is they had to have crossed the water

and it's quite a significant crossing. It's absolutely fascinating. So many things that no doubt in the future we'll be learning so much more about, so many questions that still remain unanswered. Yeah, you answer one question you come out with five more. Well, there you go. That's always the case, isn't it? I mean, but I guess one other thing for me, therefore, is Homo erectus endures for a long time in particular areas of the world, such as Java, Indonesia. Can we imagine, therefore, some of these last Homo erectus' meeting Homo sapiens coming down here, or its predecessors, Denisovans, interacting with them? Could they have potentially been interbreeding, I guess, too? That's a good question.

I'm not a geneticist, so I get this secondhand from going out for coffee with my colleagues. In the modern human genome, and I think I'm right in saying in the genomes of Denisovans and Neanderthals as well, there is a strange, very, very ancient haplogroup or allele, a strange mutation, which they think is a very old species as well. Either it got into the genome of Neanderthals and modern humans and Denisovans very early on

and has somehow just managed to kind of piggyback across the changes over time, or there were ancient species around and we were interbreeding with them. So potentially that species could have been humming erected. It's possible. And we know that the erectines, for example, in Java are around at the time modern humans are, not necessarily in Java,

but at least they're around in that part of the world. 100, 120,000 years ago is when we see modern humans appearing in China. Of course, that's a contentious date, but it's around the same period of time. How interesting. The last homo erectus is meeting the new kid on the block in modern humans and homo sapiens. That's a fascinating thought in itself, isn't it? But what would they have made of each other? Well, I know that's another, well, who knows, with the massive cranium size and so on. I mean, last thing, this has been absolutely brilliant.

We've got to wrap up now, but it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast and to come on History Hit. My pleasure. Wow. There you go. There was Professor John McNabb, aka Mac, explaining all about the fascinating human species that was Homo erectus. I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I did recording it, interviewing Mac. It's just absolutely fascinating and it was wonderful to see firsthand the objects that Mac was holding, the replica skulls, but also the hand axes as well, as he explained brilliantly this story and immersed you in the story of homo erectus and why they're so important in the development of homo sapiens of modern humans of our human story if you want to see the objects themselves that mac was holding well you can do

just that because a video version of this podcast we released on youtube roughly a week or so ago it's up there free to view and you can see mac with the objects themselves talking through the story of homo erectus now last thing from me before i completely wrap up you know what i'm gonna say and i'm gonna say it anyway because if you've enjoyed this episode and you want to help us out you know what you can do. It's simple, it's easy, but it means a lot. It helps us out a lot. You can leave us a lovely rating on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts from. It really helps us as we continue our mission to, on the one hand, of course, conquer the ancient history world,

but on the other hand, more more seriously to share these incredible stories from our distant past with you and with as many people as possible and also to give incredible experts legendary experts like mac the spotlights that they deserve for committing so many years of their life to researching these particular areas from our prehistory, from our ancient history. It's the least we can do for them. But that's enough rambling on from me. I'll see you in the next episode.