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"Homo erectus, one of modern humans’ direct ancestors, was a wandering bunch. [...] But about 400,000 years ago, Homo erectus essentially vanished." So are the
by codeflo 7y ago
"Homo erectus, one of modern humans’ direct ancestors, was a wandering bunch. [...] But about 400,000 years ago, Homo erectus essentially vanished."
So are they our direct ancestors, or have they vanished? Both can't be true.
- thdrdt 7y agoVanished in the sense of "we didn't find anything from them after that period (yet)". And as they lately discovered with home sapiens: it is very unlikely they went extinct but just 'merged'.
- codeflo 7y agoIf they are our direct ancestors, then we are surrounded by artifacts built by their descendants, are we not? That's like being confused that no one builds antique vases anymore.
- mirimir 7y agoWikipedia tells me that they ... > ... are proposed to be the direct ancestors to several human species, such as H. heidelbergensis, H. antecessor, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans. But by the time they vanished, I gather that those other species already existed.
- jbotz 7y agoWhy not? They "vanished" around the time that we "appeared", so there is no contradiction. Most recent evidence puts the earliest appearance of Homo Sapience between 300-500 Kya, perhaps even a bit more than 500 Kya. In practice with evolution there is often an overlap of ancestral and descendant species, especially in isolated environments, and thus the discovery that there probably were Homo Erectus on Java until 100 Kya thus also fits with this.
- codeflo 7y agoDo "vanish" and "appear" have another meaning that I'm not aware of? To me, they imply two discontinuities. But if they are our direct ancestors, they simply gradually became us. Or rather, we still are them.