The first human to leave Africa
Homo erectus has our body plan — and goes
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Turkana Boy from Kenya, around 1.6 million years, shows body proportions that are distinctly human. Dmanisi in Georgia gives the oldest secure finds outside Africa, dated to 1.8 million years — remarkably early, and with small brains, which undercuts the assumption that large brains were a precondition for dispersal. The Acheulean handaxe, symmetrical in three dimensions, demands mental planning of a wholly different order from Oldowan flakes. Homo erectus is the longest-lived human species we know; the last may have survived on Java until around 110,000 years ago.
For children
Homo erectus was the first human with a body like ours: long legs, short arms, built to walk and run far. Within a few hundred thousand years they had spread as far as China and Indonesia. They made carefully shaped handaxes and survived for almost two million years — ten times longer than we have existed.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org