The Ancients - The First Humans

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

Where do humans come from? Or, perhaps more interestingly, who did humans evolve from? A question once posed by the likes of Charles Darwin and other early naturalists, the answer has changed throughout history. But now, thanks to advancements in archaeology and developments in genetics, we know more about our early ancestors than ever before. But what exactly makes us human, and who do we have to thank for these early evolutionary traits?In this fascinating episode, Tristan travelled to London's Natural History Museum to chat with Professor Fred Spoor, a leading expert on the topic. Join them as they journey back millions of years to examine the earliest known hominids - from the Homohabilis, to early Homoerectus, and checking in on paranthropus and australopithecines along the way. Together they aim to ask the question, where exactly did humans come from?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 Entrance on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode, well, we've seen how popular episodes on Neanderthals, the First Britons, Homo erectus have been. And I cannot blame you. I cannot blame

the love that's been shared for these episodes because like you, I also find human prehistory, paleoanthropology so, so interesting. It's really kicked a nerve weirdly with me. I think it's just amazing when we're going so far back in time and we're learning about human evolution, these predecessor hominins that we've evolved from. As mentioned, we've covered Neanderthals, we've covered Homo erectus, we've covered the origins of Homo sapiens too. But say we're going right back in time, we're going back millions of years because we're talking about what's arguably the first humans now it's important to highlight here we mustn't think of a linear line almost that there was one hominin that emerged and then it went to another hominin and another and another and

finally get bam you get homo sapiens it's a lot more complicated and complex than that as you're going to hear in this episode today with our brilliant expert, none other than Professor Fred Spohr from the Natural History Museum. I headed over to the Natural History Museum last week to interview Fred and it was fantastic. I'll tell you what, Fred, he's a leading expert. He knows all about this stuff. He's done lots of research out in Africa at the sites themselves. And we cover different hominins varying from Homo habilis to early Homo erectus to other species such as Paranthropus and Australopithecines. What are these species? Well, you're going to hear all about it right now. Because without further ado, to talk all about the first humans, here's Fred.

Because without further ado, to talk all about the first humans, here's Fred. Fred, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. Most welcome at the museum, Natural History Museum. I mean, exactly. We're doing it in person at the Natural History Museum. I love coming here and I've been here a few times now. And it's wonderful to be doing another early human episode of the ancients. We've done Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, we've done Homo erectus, but this time going right back to the start of the Homo genus. And is it fair to say right at the start, Fred, that this is quite murky water? This is an area that seems to be always changing

with new discoveries and so on. Yes, in many respects it is. And so often as you get closer to the emergence of some lineage some evolutionary lineage things get a bit more murky because the closer things become get together it becomes unclear where the differences are the more things evolve the more distinct they become in many respects and on top of that unfortunately in the time periods that we think that a lot of the origins and early evolution of our genus happens, from that time period we don't have that many fossils. And that's not a conspiracy against us all. That's basically just bad luck with the geology and the sort of exposures we have when we roam around Africa. No such thing is a silly question, Fred. If we're

talking about the first humans, the early stages of the Homo species, how exactly do we define a human, a member of the Homo species? Well, yeah, that's a really good question. And there's often a lot of confusion when, what do you call a human anyway? That is sort of described by people in different ways. When you talk about the origin of us, some people would strictly see it as the origin of Homo sapiens, of us modern Homo sapiens, maybe even. Some would see that as the origin of our entire family or tribe, I should actually say. So basically after we parted ways with the chimpanzees. So you go back seven million years and that's basically the entire period covered bypanzees. So you go back seven million years and that's basically

the entire period covered by human evolution. So that's our origins. And the one that is actually often least considered is our lineage where we belong to the genus Homo. So why is that of interest? Because it seems to be just a branch somewhere halfway through. And that's in part because particularly in the past, people really made a lot of fuss about the question whether you could be called homo or not homo was really linked with certain types of behavior about using stone tools about having bigger brains and suddenly becoming very clever so it was quite associated with a bit of a revolution happening in the middle of of human evolution. So you had stupid ape-like, bipedal ape-like creatures roaming around and then there

was a revolution and presto there was the genus Homo that started to evolve and then step by step you reached, almost linearly you would reach Homo sapiens. And that is a very important framework to remember because that's, if you would go back historically, which is, I think, is quite important to have some understanding of that, how the first fossils of early Homo were found, how they were placed, whether that was accepted or not. So that gives a bit of a background why it is so murky and why it's so difficult. We mentioned background, and we'll get into those examples of early Homo very, very quickly. But first of all, roughly, because I know we're going back back so so far back in human prehistory paleoanthropology

but how far back roughly are we going with these early homo species well really well recognized and reasonably represented only just over two million years ago but there's very good sign for something that we all agree on is early Homo, and that's an upper jaw from Ethiopia that is about 2.3 million, so it's a bit deeper in time, and not that long ago in the same area in Ethiopia, not far where the famous skeleton Lucy was found, there was a piece of mandible, lower jaw, found, and that's 2.8, but that is a very good example where if you would just pick up the lower jaw, the half bit of lower jaw found and that's 2.8 but that is a very good example where if you would just pick up the lower jaw the the half bit of lower jaw on the whole you would think that it would actually

belong to the the ancestral group the supposed ancestral group referred to as australopithecus and it's only because of some very specialized little detailed differences in the way that lower jaw was built, that you would say, hmm, looks like this is on the way to eventually be part of that whole branching pattern of our own genus. Of course, the individual that lost its lower jaw when he was walking around it had no clue where he was going. So by all means and purposes, that individual was an Australopithecus-like looking creature. But that's the way our study of evolution works. If you have some good scientific indications that some

branching had happened, maybe some isolation of some populations somewhere away from the main crowd, and you know with hindsight, this is all hindsight of us looking back at this, you figure out that those telltale signs indicated that they are on the lineage of Homo, then it becomes the genus Homo, even though no revolution has happened, it's just a small telltale sign. And that 2.8 million year old mandible is a very good example. And in regards therefore of where in the world this is all happening, so it sounds there from what you're saying that this is all happening in Africa.

Yes that's actually perhaps good to delineate that straight away until a little after 2 million all of human evolution happens in Africa and there's no evidence of anything else outside Africa. Sometimes you know it's good to speculate about fossils that we might have missed or are just not represented, and that there might be older species that have already left Africa before. Because even if you would go to 3 million years ago, then you would still say, yes, but before 3 million, there's absolutely nothing. And we should remember the split between humans and chimpanzees is approximately given at about between seven and eight million years ago. So human evolution is a lot deeper in time in total than two or three million. So for a long time all of this happened on the African continent and it is that species Homo erectus that because of

changes in its behavior and its capability to walk and run and jump and do all these things on two legs, much better than their predecessors, that you get these migration routes out of Africa. And then they very quickly actually reach China and Indonesia and other places where Asia gets populated. You mentioned back then Australopithecines. Set the context a bit more for us with the emergence of these first homo species that far back, you know, two, three million years ago. But what are these relatives of homonyms that were already existing then? Yeah, so there's between, let's say, about four and three million in eastern Africa and a little later between three and two perhaps in southern

Africa. You have a group of rather primitive ancestor of humans. You could characterize it, it's not entirely correct, but as sort of in your mind as a properly bipedal walking chimpanzee like type. So that's not a waddling ape or something, they were very well capable of walking properly on two legs. But overall, the skull was not that different from what you would see in the great apes. The famous skeleton Lucy is part of that species, particular of the species Australopithecus afarensis,

which we broadly speaking, including its direct predecessor, sort of recognized between about 4 and 3 million years ago. In the minds of many people, that would be the ancestral species from which everything after that derives, including other Australopithecus species in southern Africa. Others might say that's only really a snapshot that we know mostly from Ethiopia and a bit from Tanzania, and there might be a lot of other things going on. So maybe even the origin of the Digenus Homo might be deeper in time and not necessarily linked with this

particular species, Aucilopithecus. But you could argue that it's been marketed very well when it was found by the particular, by Don Johansson, a well-known name, a bit like Richard Leakey is a well-known name. And Don Johansson did excellent work in Eastern Africa, but he also marketed this new species, Aucilopithecus afarensis, as well. So everybody knows about the skeleton Lucy. But that's sort of the predecessor. And with early Homo, as already indicated, initially there's actually not that much difference to see. But overall, there is a tendency to reduce the dentition. So the teeth, particularly the molar teeth, the chewing teeth in the back of your mouth, they become gradually smaller. Initially, they aren't actually much.

The brain eventually over time becomes somewhat larger, and there's also more esoteric things happening. So that's sort of a transition, but it's definitely not a, it's a very gradual change probably. And ultimately, I have to directly say that any of that period before 2 million years ago, when we suddenly have an explosion of fossils that we can look at and debate, before that time period, we know very little. And a lot of it is speculation.

A lot of speculation. And it's so interesting. I hope you don't mind I go on one more tangent, because I'd feel a myth if I didn't mention it, which was something that I saw in the news recently around another of these relatives, Paranthropus. This seems to be another one alongside Australopithecine, but it's also been quite interesting with recent potential alignment with early tools, if I'm not mistaken. That's very important that you mention that. Paranthropus, indeed, that's why it comes out, but there are plenty of colleagues who might actually subsume it and also call it australopithecus,

but a robust, as it's often referred to, a robust version of, and that means that they are very, in the head at least, in the skull, very heavily built chewing machines, you could almost say, big chewing muscles, as a consequence that the lower jaws are very big, that the cheekbones are really sort of arched and accommodate large chewing muscles. Chewing muscles reach all the way up to the top of the head and create the crest as you would see in male gorillas and in orangutans as well. So it shares these things and the teeth are enormous. The chewing teeth are really double the size or so of what you would see in other human ancestors.

So they are a very specialized group that we assume has a diet that is more focused on plant diet type things that need a lot of chewing, a lot of abrasion. You can see as you find the fossils that even when they're quite young, they start to wear that tooth enamel already quite quickly. So that is a whole side branch. Now they occur both in eastern Africa and in southern Africa more or less at the same time as early Homo, as when we find fossils of early Homo. So you have these two together. And then there's also this very important aspect that you raised which is stone tools. So for a

very long time, and maybe this is a good opportunity to briefly do a historical, where does early Homo historically come from? Louis and Mary Leakey, the parents of Richard Leakey, who died last year. Louis and Mary Leakey have been exploring and excavating in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania since the 1930s. They found stone tools, they found, you know, the old scrap of bone, and of course, a lot of animal bones, but old scrap of bone of potentially human ancestors. Perseverance, and eventually in the late 1950s, they struck gold, you could say. And the first thing they found in 1959, Mary actually found a beautifully preserved skull cranium, so no lower jaw, but only the upper part, of indeed one of

those creatures that we now might call Paranthropus. And it was so impressive, and it remains so impressive, and really big chewing teeth and whatever, that it very quickly in the press got this name of Nutcracker Man. National Geographic funded part of the work, so here's Nutcracker Man. And meanwhile, of course, ever since the 1930s, they had found stone tools around in certain layers. So was this the toolmaker? And you could say for a microsecond, Louis Leakey, who was always quite good at speculating and weaving good stories,

immediately really advocated for a brief period. This was the, he had found the toolmaker or they had found the toolmaker. But then actually very soon after that, within months, they started finding remains of another clearly human-related species with small teeth. And there were some indications that the brain was larger. Pits of the vault had been found and larger brain, smaller teeth.

Some hand fossils that looked interesting. And he very quickly changed his mind and said, no, this is the toolmaker. And this is is the beginning of us of the genus Homo and so eventually it was proposed a new species was made Homo habilis handyman translation almost handyman fitted somewhere in a cascade of species that you get from a chimp like ancestor to modernity being us Homo sapiens, modern humans. And certainly in those days, and to some extent to this day I sometimes think, people really think about human evolution as this one linear progression from something very primitive,

step by step to a step, evolving into something very modern like us. So what did we have in those days, in the very early 1960s? We had Australopithecus in South Africa, and on the other hand, we knew about Homo erectus, mostly from Indonesia and China, Peking man and Java man, and that sort of things that had been found in the 1930s, 40s. And what Louis Leakey and his colleagues advocated was that his new fossil filled the gap

between Australopithecus in South Africa and Homo erectus, which was recognized as definitely genus Homo and stone tools and all kinds of things, much more, okay, smaller brain, but nevertheless, much more similar to us. So he filled a niche and there was immediately quite a discussion all the way through the 60s whether yes or no there was actually room to fill a gap. Some people would say no no no no going from Australopithecus to Homo erectus is really a small step so either what you found is already Homo erectus or what you found is still Australopithecus and new fossils were found and gradually towards the end of the 60s it homo habilis as an additional species but nicely filling that gap between the two became more accepted and then in many respects

in terms of of studying human evolution the real revolution happened because the son Richard of Mary and Lewis started working for himself in Kenya. So he started to explore the area around Lake Turkana in the north of Kenya. He had found it by accident by flying over it by plane and being veered off course by some thunderstorms and saw from his window, from his airplane window, that there were certain sediments that to him looked like sandstones that might contain fossils. And he went back, found fossils. And then the first expedition he organized in 1968, from that moment onwards, within five, six years, they found an absolute treasure trove of fossils,

broadly speaking, from between 2 and 1.5, 1.4 million years ago. And among those was, again, peranthropus, that we talked about, but also a range of things that would really classify as either Homo erectus or something that was clearly not Homo erectus was still genus Homo and so that certainly if there was any doubt left that Homo habilis was something that there was something before Homo erectus and was still Homo. He had definitely demonstrated that. And with that, interpreting not only the fossils that had been found in Olduvai Gorge in the 1960s, but also the things from around Lake Turkana, then the real debate started, because you had a lot of specimens to look at.

How different is this from Homo erectus? Do all these other fossils represent one species, perhaps more than one species? So you get into this whole bunch. But as I indicated, stone tools were very important initially for who was the toolmaker. And up till not that long ago, a few years in fact, it was really thought that it was the genus Homo who made stone tools and not Australopithecus, not Paranthropus, nothing like this. That spell of the genus Homo over stone tools was initially broken when it was discovered that chimpanzees used stone tools, not necessarily really made them, not modeled them, but at least used them to hammer on nuts

and do all kinds of things. Capuchin monkeys turned out to be to use stone tools, so it was quite widespread, not as unique. And then at some stage on the western side of Lake Turkana, stone tools were found that are 3.3 million years old, and clearly not a genus Homo. If anything, they're directly associated with a human relative, you could say, that is close to my heart, because I was part of the team that described it, That is close to my heart because I was part of the team that described it. Something called Kenyanthropus platyops, flat-faced human from Kenya. And that's exactly what it looks like, a very flat face.

And these stone tools were found by French archaeologists. And they developed this. And it's, on the whole, well accepted that you have these very primitive, but nevertheless real stone tools made, produced 3. million so with that the genus homo has already lost that crown as well that they're the only tool makers so you know as we go through time a lot of these special things about our genus are disappearing at times and it's just a biological phenomenon that there is a lineage to us over on the warfare podcast by history here we bring you brand new military histories from around the world each week twice a week we release new episodes with world-leading historians expert policy makers and the veterans who served from the greatest

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and I think that's what the Ukrainians should signal today too. Subscribe to Warfare from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts, and join us on the front lines of military history. it is so interesting for it when you highlight that and especially that recent news too with these tools being so old and before the homo species emerges but you did mention during that chat there homo habilis and this seems to be a name that's often associated with very early hominins, very early humans. But just so we can really picture this in our minds, when talking about Homo habilis, what do we think this early human looks like? Well, that's a very good question, as they say, when they try to sort of give it a moment thought.

But of course, this is a question that's been asked many times. This is a question that's been asked many times. And I slightly hesitate because it is indeed very often about subtleties and not necessarily, ah, presto. Homo erectus, for instance, is because it's taller in statue and bigger in brain. And if you look in the mouth, it's pretty close to what we have in the mouth. These things are all very easy to describe, very distinct. These things are all very easy to describe, very distinct. Homo habilis, well, the real correct biological answer is that anything that is similar to what is called the type specimen, the holotype, and that is that original specimen that Louis Leakey described from Olduvai Gorge, which actually after some restudy, which I've done recently with a group at Max Planck Institute in Germany,

we really sort of figure out that it's pretty primitive in its jaws, lower jaw than in particular, but actually brain size, it can challenge in brain size pretty much early homo erectus as well. So this distinction where you go from a pea brain, from a small brain thing to something larger is not necessarily even the case. a pea brain from a small brain thing to something larger is not necessarily even the case. It differs from mouselopithecus in a number of aspects, indeed details of the teeth. Initially not necessarily even the size, but sort of the proportions, the way the molar teeth are built, the shape of them, the way the cusps are arranged. So they are actually quite subtle things. And as we go further in time, it will increasingly be difficult to

recognize what is already Homo and what is not. So that is not so easy. What is the postcranial skeleton? How are the limb bones and the torso of Homo habilis like? Well, we actually have very few indications for that. There's one partial skeleton from Tanzania, again from Olduvai Gorge, that is actually remarkably primitive. It's as partial skeleton from Tanzania, again from Olduvai Gorge, that is actually remarkably primitive. It's as primitive showing climbing capabilities as you would see in the skeleton Lucy. Lucy is a small female in the pool of everything we know about Australopithecus afarensis. There's also much larger males, so we know an awful lot about Australopithecus. Homo habilis is only a few examples. So is this particular find with a skeleton,

is that a small female? Yes, quite likely. But overall, what happens with the limb bones? What are the climbing, potentially still tree climbing capabilities? That sort of things are not really that well known. Right, that's interesting because I remember chatting with John McNabb,

Mac about Homo erectus and how he was saying that's the first fully bipedal human we know of where that tree climbing ability has completely gone. But with habilis, it still seems to be there. Yes, there's at least some indications that it's still there. Let's face it, there's a big debate even within us, Lopithecus, even in something like Lucy and her companions, whether they habitually would use trees

for foraging and for sleeping at night in nests for instance which would be the typical thing that you would do if you're a tree climber. There are colleagues who would say any of these sort of primitive features that you'd still see that reminds us of chimpanzees for instance that's just evolutionary luggage that has no function whatsoever anymore that's just it's not in the way and it just it's there. They were bipeds. Particularly when there was a real scientific debate about what is the role of Australopithecus in human evolution, the human-like characteristics were often emphasized and any ape-like things were poo-pooed. But it is really a mix

and I'm sort of in the other camp that indeed says all those primitive tree climbing capability features that you might see, they were probably maintained otherwise they would really fade out over evolutionary time. So they probably were maintained because they were still used and the complete dedication to what you would call habitual two-leggedness, bipedalism is indeed something that we first see with Homo erectus. I must also question you about another key early Homo species that I always seem to see

in a few papers that I've had a look at before this. And this is, you've already mentioned Lake Turkana, I think it's found in that kind of area it's Homo rudolfensis. What's the story behind this one? Interesting story. When Richard Leakey started with his team in 1968, and the first fossils that they found were pretty much all peranthropus,

so this big, chewing, large, molars thing. They found a nice skull, actually, that rivaled the beautiful thing that their parents had found in Olduvai Gorge. Then the real big breakthrough fossil that they found a few years after that in the very early 70s was a fossil that wasn't very promising when it was found. It was really a hundred thousand pieces sort of you know you smash the china and that's what you

get. But few pieces were recognized on the surface by his fantastic fossil finding team that he worked with scouts go out and looking for things in the landscape. Then they did a big excavation and looked around. They found a lot of pieces. And then there was a long puzzle work that was largely done by both the wife of Richard Leakey, Meve Leakey, who would eventually take over his research project in Lake Turkana when Richard moved on to the Wildlife Service and even did stuff in government. He sort of got bored with human evolution. How can you? But he has all the right to, at that time, to be bored with it.

But Maeve had time because she was pregnant, so she couldn't go out in the really hot sun at that time with the rest of the team. So she stayed more in camp. And she started puzzling and was very good at puzzling. And she was then joined by Alan Walker who was originally English but then had already moved to the US, paleontologist, anthropologist, paleontologist who worked in a function just like for instance Bernard Wood today they were the anatomist who would help Richard Leakey with describing the fossils and Alan and

Meave together puzzled together this this fossil and it grew and it grew and it grew and eventually despite all these tiny little pieces they all, like a perfect puzzle, they all fitted beautifully together. There was no erosion where you think this is really fit or not fit, no, it just clicked together. Clicked together, they ended up with a brain case and a face, front of the face, beautiful specimen and it just got down to earth catalog number 1470 KNM Kenyan National Museum dash ER that stands for East Rudolph because in those really early days Lake Turkana was not called Lake Turkana but in colonial days it was called Lake Rudolph which is important in this whole context but the museum number was established as East Rudolf on

the east side of Lake Rudolf so it is KNM ER 1470 number 1470 found there now that's interesting so this was a skull that's or a cranium I should say no lower jaw that Richard Leakey became very famous with he was even on the cover of Time magazine with it and of course everywhere on National Geographic and whatever and documentaries. A very impressive thing. Why? Because it had a big brain, quite a bit larger than what you would see in the fossils from Olduvai Gorge that we would call Homo habilis. But the debate instantly started, you know, is the difference between the two in brain size, is that enough to, that they're different things? And that really big impressive face was also really quite interesting. So it was a very complete specimen, actually nicer, despite having been found in all these tiny little pieces. It was interesting because of completeness. And also it was really rather old. It was initially actually thought to be well over 2 million, but it eventually ended up being about 2 million years old. And it really started the whole debate,

is this cranium the same as what we call Homo habilis from Olduvai Gorge? And by that time, once the debate really went, they had also found some other beautiful crania from Lake Turkana again. Some of them were Homo erectus, very clearly Homo erectus, it's not really debated, it's complete consensus. And some other crania that look much more like what you find in Olduvai gorge and so they were then Homo habilis. So what about this 1470 cranium? And I mentioned Bernard Wood, he was the other anatomist. Alan Walker helped reconstruct 1470 but Bernard Wood had been tasked by Richard Leakey to describe all the skull fossils of the hominins that he found with this team and so he

got to work on trying to figure out what do we do with this whole bunch of fantastic early Homo fossils. The debate went on through the 70s and even throughout the 80s and actually eventually in 1990 he came out with a big book, a monograph that described everything and in it he, I would almost say hinted at, but he expressed the opinion that he thought that it was more than one species represented. And so apart from Homo erectus you would have Homo habilis and something else and he left it at that. That was partly because Richard Leakey was very keen that his beautiful skull 1470 should be a Homo habilis that was almost an emotional attachment in the whole thing but then Bernard Wood published the paper very quickly after that in the journal

Nature where he was more sort of away from his official task of writing this big monograph he could really give his complete scientific opinion and then he said this is a different species and we have to give it a name and then he had to come out with saying oops it already has a name because in the 1980s a Russian paleontologist who had never been to Kenya had never seen this specimen but had seen photographs of the specimen had written several articles. It's a bit of a misconception sometimes in the popular literature that he actually published the name in a children's book, but that is not the case. If you know the Russian literature, which I only know because asking the right people who do know this,

he did write a scientific article first about it. He looked at this 1470 skull and said, this is not Homo habilis, this is another species. And he gave it the name, originally actually not Homo rudolfensis. He probably gave it the name Pythocantropus rudolfensis, which is an old, the Pythocantropus name is an old one for Homo erectus. But that doesn't matter. He put the name rudolfensis in the records. And biology in general, not just fossils, but also, you know, all modern living creatures, they all have an original description

with a type specimen, one particular specimen to which the name is attached. Once that name is established, if you don't like the name, bad luck, because we all accept the rules as biologists in the world that once a name is established, unless there's a very good reason that it's invalid, it has to be accepted.

So he had made this name and he did all the small requirements that are necessary among biologists to make something into a new species. He all fulfilled those things. There was some debate about it whether he did or not, but he did. So the name Rudolf Fensis was there for the 1470 skull, if it turned out to be a different species. Now that wasn't very nice for Richard personally, but also for Kenya in general as a country,

because he named the species innocently, undoubtedly, but still very misguided. He named it after the colonial name of Lake Turkana, and the Kenyans, after the Brits had left, had made a big point of renaming some prominent things from the colonial name to a new name. In other words, Lake Rudolf Fences became Lake Turkana. And what happens, a very prominent find in human evolution is named after Lake Rudolf. So but we're stuck with the name Rudolf Fensis.

So anyone who says, who agrees with the original verdict of Bernard Wood that this 1470 cranium is something else than the old established stuff in the fossils found in Olduvai Gorge and also other things in Lake Turkana, they will have then to accept that the name for that second species is Homo Rudolfensis. The difference between the two have been long debated. Rudolfolfensis initially was really thought as having a larger brain, but particularly in the face they are very different. Homo habilis is very much primitive looking in the face, more australopithecus looking in the face with a snout, really sort of a snouty creature. That sounds like derogative a bit,

like oh snouty, that's primitive, but in the context of 1470 and Homo rudofensis, I should say that we as Homo sapiens on the whole also can be quite snouty. So Homo habilis was snouty, but Homo rudofensis in the form of 1470 is really pretty flat-faced. The snout has been withdrawn and the cheekbones sit more or less on the same level as the opening for your nose. So it's very curious. In many respects that face reminds us a little bit about Nutcracker Man, about Perontopus, but it quite likely didn't have the really big teeth.

And by its brain and various other features it was clearly homo. But there were plenty of people who would say anything from, ah, but actually 1470 and what you call Rudolf Fens is actually a male and what we call Homo habilis is actually just females and you mix up what you call sexual dimorphism, the difference between males and females, which we of course know can be quite big in gorillas and orangutans and also in Paranthropus. You just mix that up with different species. So that debate's gone on and on and on. I must say on the whole it looks like, especially I would say that of course after our team, and by that I mean the team of Meev Leakey,

the successor of Richard Leakey's team that works in Lake Turkana and where I now have the role as the anatomist who describes the cranial material. We published a number of new fossils that can clearly be assigned to the same thing as the anatomist who describes the cranial material. We published a number of new fossils that can clearly be assigned to the same thing as the 1470 skull and really gives much more credibility still to the Rudolfensis names. Fred, that was all so fascinating

behind the story of this early Homo species, Homo rudolfensis. I must ask, therefore, so does it seem to show that even this far back, two to three million years ago, the early stages of the emergence of the Homo species, that there is still a real deep diversity there too in the origins of Homo? There really is. And that is, of course, because, well, we think that the genus Homo somewhere emerged between three and two,

but it might even be older than three million. We really don't know, but we only got a really good view at about 2 million years ago. And if we actually really look at what we have around 2 million years ago, in Eastern Africa in particular, we find indeed Homo habilis, Homo rhodophensis, accepting it as a second species. But we also know that from 2 million years ago Homo erectus was around. And we also know that Paranthropus, this particular nutcracker man Paranthropus, was around. So we're talking about at least four species in the same area on the landscape. And by the way, this really touches on one very interesting thing that always bemused me initially, because I don't have a background in human evolution per se. I'm a mammalian paleontologist originally.

So I never had lectures about all of this where you could ask all the silly questions. So I got for my PhD into human evolution sideways and just had to brush up on all of this by reading about it. And I always wondered, why is this thing called early Homo? Because I look at the dates when they were alive and Homo erectus was also already known. And now I'm talking late 1980s.s was already known from the same time and yes

after far more dating work has been done to find out how all these species are credible ever really good evidence for Homo habilis Homo rudolfensis and Homo erectus all dates from around two million years ago. So that doesn't mean that by explosion they suddenly were all there. It's just that we find the right rock formations with the layers of mostly sandstone where we find those fossils. So suddenly we get a snapshot.

But it is not to say that Homo erectus is any later than Homo habilis or Rudolf Ensis. That term early still comes from this deep desire to put everything on one lineage and to say yes but it is really what we're really looking at here literally what some people advocate to this day what is really the sequence that has played out there is Australopithecus going to for instance Homo rudolfensis going to Homo habilis going to Homo erectus going to Homo sapiens. Nice line. And if you find them together, maybe they made a mistake in the geology or it is a bit, you know, okay, there might be a little bit of overlap at the time, but it's still one linear

thing. And well, I think that scientific evidence shows definitely not. Thank you for highlighting that near the end. I mean, why? Why do we think we see the emergence of these particular species at that time? Not clear. By now, the cliche answer could be climate change, you know, different opportunities. And it is undoubtedly true that changing ecology, changing environments, drive speciation an awful lot. Exactly what very early representatives of the genus Homo specifically were adapted to is unclear and not everything is adaptation. It's very important to remember it's a very old-fashioned way of looking at the evolution trying to explain everything by a reason, by why, you know adaptation

of the fittest and all these sort of that sort of terminology. Apart from that it really happens you're adapted to under pressure from the environment, but there's also quite a lot of what you call genetic drift going on where you separate off a part of a population, you genetically isolate it from the mother population, you let it just go by itself, it doesn't stay static, just randomly your DNA will change and small changes come in and start drifting, you just drift away from where you are. So there are all kinds of changes that perhaps have no reason or function whatsoever, it just is because it is. And as long as these differences are large enough

that by the time you meet up again with your mother population you're no longer the same species. Then you've got speciation based on very little. Well, Fred, this has been absolutely fascinating. I could ask questions for hours, but I've got to wrap it up there. It just goes me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you very much. Well, there you go. How about that for an episode? There was Professor Fred Spohr taking us back more than a million, two million years, deep into prehistoric Africa and the emergence of these various hominins, Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and so on and so forth. It is so fascinating, and I hope you've enjoyed the episode today. It is so fascinating and I hope you've enjoyed the episode today.

You can count that we'll be doing more prehistoric paleoanthropological topics in the near future on the ancients. There are still so many stories that we have yet to unravel. Now in the meantime, if you've been enjoying the ancients and you want to help us out, well, you know what you can do. You can leave us a lovely rating on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts from. It really helps us as we continue our overarching mission to share these amazing stories from our distant past with you and with as many people as possible and if you have any

thoughts on the content on the episodes that we've released please do leave a comment wherever you get your podcast from it's always lovely hearing your feedback, what you love about the episodes, but also what you think we can do better for the future. Now, that's enough rambling on from me. Once again, I really do hope you've enjoyed this episode with Fred today, and I'll see you in the next episode.