We can put homo erectus in the ambiguous category, if you know of some argument to do so, but the early homo erectus (what splitters would simply call actual ho

We can put homo erectus in the ambiguous category, if you know of some argument to do so, but the early homo erectus (what splitters would simply call actual homo erectus) had a brain size of 900 cc, so you'd need to explain how modern intelligence works in that dramatically smaller brain. Lumpers include later humans in the category of "homo erectus" when brain size is 1200cc. If you yourself are a lumper, you should say so, as that would resolve some confusion. I'm personally with the splitters, having been won over by the arguments that Ian Tattersall advanced, so when I say that homo erectus is stupid, I'm referring to people whose brains were 900cc. Here is an article written from the lumper point of view, so perhaps this is what you were thinking of: https://www.shorthistory.org/prehistory/brain-size-of-the-prehistoric-humans/ https://www.shorthistory.org/prehistory/brain-size-of-the-pr... "Homo habilis, who lived approximately 2 million years ago, was 750 cc. Homo erectus shows this transition most dramatically, indicating that most of the evolutionary increase in brain size took place during the life of this species. Early Homo erectus in Africa (from about 1.7 to 1 million years ago) averaged 900 cc in brain size, but later Homo erectus specimens from .5 million years ago average 1100-1200 cc, which falls within the range of the brain size of modern humans. The earliest or archaic forms of Homo sapiens, the species to which we belong, dates to 300,000-400,000 years ago and averages over 1200 cc. The Neanderthal skull has a brain size of 1500 cc, which is actually larger than the brains of most modern humans. The average for ourselves, Homo sapiens, is around 1400 cc." That is not the story I was working with when I wrote the above comment. Here is an article that suggests the splitter story: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/homo-heidelbergensis-the-answer-to-a-mysterious-period-in-human-history https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/homo-heidelber... "Between H. erectus and H. sapiens, intermediate species existed, variably named Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis or Homo antecessor, depending on a researcher’s views. Many anthropologists just call the whole bunch Middle Pleistocene hominins, after the geologic time period 130,000 to 780,000 years ago. One spectacular site, Sima de los Huesos in Spain, has yielded the most Mid-Pleistocene hominin remains. Excavations there since the 1980s have unearthed more than 7,000 fossils representing at least 28 individuals dated to 430,000 years ago." In that story, homo heidelbergensis is in between homo erectus and homo sapien.