Homo floresiensis
Homo floresiensis is an extinct species in the genus Homo. The remains of an individual who would have stood about 1.1 m in height were discovered in 2004 at Liang Bua on the island of Flores in Indonesia. Partial skeletons of nine individuals have been recovered, including one complete skull, referred to as "LB1"; these remains have been the subject of intense research to determine whether they represent a species distinct from modern humans, though the dominant consensus is that these remains do represent a distinct species due to genetic and anatomical differences. This hominin had been considered remarkable for its survival until recent times, only 12,000 years ago. However, more extensive stratigraphic and chronological work has pushed the dating of the most recent evidence of its existence back to 50,000 years ago; the Homo floresiensis. Fossil teeth and a partial jaw from hominins assumed to be ancestral to H. floresiensis were discovered in 2014 and described in 2016. These remains are from a site on Flores called Mata Menge, about 74 km from Liang Bua.
They date to about 700,000 years ago and are smaller than the fossils. The discoverers, Mike Morwood et al. proposed that a variety of features, both primitive and derived, identify these individuals as belonging to a new species, H. floresiensis, within the taxonomic tribe of Hominini, which includes all species that are more related to humans than to chimpanzees. Based on previous date estimates, the discoverers proposed that H. floresiensis lived contemporaneously with modern humans on Flores. Two orthopedic studies published in 2007 reported evidence to support species status for H. floresiensis. A study of three tokens of carpal bones concluded there were differences from the carpal bones of modern humans and similarities to those of a chimpanzee or an early hominin such as Australopithecus. A study of the bones and joints of the arm and lower limbs concluded that H. floresiensis was more similar to early humans and other apes than modern humans. In 2009, the publication of a cladistic analysis and a study of comparative body measurements provided further support for the hypothesis that H. floresiensis and Homo sapiens are separate species.
In 2015, the results of Bayesian analysis were published, which used more than 300 morphological characteristics of fossil hominins. Van den Bergh et al. suggested derivation from a population of H. erectus that arrived on Flores about a million years ago and became dwarfed. A phylogenetic analysis published in 2017 suggests that H. floresiensis was descended from the same ancestor as Homo habilis, making it a "sister species" to either H. habilis or to a minimally habilis-erectus-ergaster-sapiens clade, its line much more ancient than Homo erectus itself. On the basis of this classification H. floresiensis is hypothesized to represent a hitherto unknown and early migration out of Africa. A similar conclusion was suggested in a 2018 study dating stone artefacts found at Shangchen, central China, to 2.1 million years ago. The specimens were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003 by a joint Australian-Indonesian team of archaeologists looking for evidence of the original human migration of Homo sapiens from Asia to Australia.
They were not expecting to find a new species, were surprised at the recovery of a nearly complete skeleton of a hominin they dubbed LB1 because it was unearthed inside the Liang Bua Cave. Subsequent excavations recovered seven additional skeletons dated from 38,000 to 13,000 years ago. An arm bone provisionally assigned to H. floresiensis is about 74,000 years old. The specimens are not fossilized and have been described as having "...the consistency of wet blotting paper." Once exposed, the bones had to be left to dry. Stone implements of a size considered appropriate to the 3-foot-tall human are widely present in the cave; the implements are at horizons dated at from 95,000 to 13,000 years ago and are associated with an elephant of the extinct genus Stegodon the prey of LB1. Homo sapiens reached the region by around 50,000 years ago, by which time Homo floresiensis is thought to have reached extinction. Comparisons of the stone artefacts with those made by modern humans in East Timor indicate many technological similarities.
Homo floresiensis was unveiled on 28 October 2004, was swiftly nicknamed the hobbit, after the fictional race popularized in J. R. R. Tolkien's book The Hobbit, a proposed scientific name for the species was Homo hobbitus, it was placed in its own genus, Sundanthropus floresianus, but reviewers of the article felt that the cranium, despite its size, belonged in the genus Homo. The most important and obvious identifying features of H. floresiensis are its small body and small cranial capacity. Brown and Morwood identified a number of additional, less obvious features that might distinguish LB1 from modern H
Taíno
The Taíno were an indigenous people of the Caribbean. At the time of European contact in the late fifteenth century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, The Bahamas and the northern Lesser Antilles; the Taíno were the first New World peoples to be encountered by Christopher Columbus during his 1492 voyage. They spoke an Arawakan language; the ancestors of the Taíno originated in South America, the Taíno culture as documented developed in the Caribbean. Taíno groups were in conflict with the Island Caribs of the southern Lesser Antilles. At the time of contact, the Taíno were divided into several groups. Western Taíno groups included the Lucayans of the Bahamas, the Ciboney of central Cuba, the inhabitants of Jamaica; the Classic Taíno lived in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, while the Eastern Taíno lived in the northern islands of the Lesser Antilles. At the time of Columbus's arrival in 1492, there were five Taíno chiefdoms in Hispaniola, each led by a principal Cacique, to whom tribute was paid.
The Taíno name for Hispaniola was Ayiti, the source of the name Haiti. Cuba was divided into 29 chiefdoms, many of which have given their name to modern cities, including Havana, Batabanó, Camagüey, Bayamo. Taíno communities ranged from small settlements to larger centers of up to 3,000 people, they may have numbered 2 million at the time of contact. The Spanish conquered various Taíno chiefdoms during early sixteenth century. According to The Black Legend and harsh enslavement by the colonists decimated the population. A smallpox epidemic in Hispaniola in 1518–1519 killed 90% of the surviving Taíno; the remaining Taíno were intermarried with Europeans and Africans, were incorporated into the Spanish colonies. The Taíno were considered extinct by the end of the century. However, since about 1840, there have been attempts to create a quasi-indigenous Taíno identity in rural areas of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico; this trend accelerated among Puerto Rican communities in the mainland United States in the 1960s.
At the 2010 U. S. census, 1,098 people in Puerto Rico identified themselves as "Puerto Rican Indian", 1,410 identified as "Spanish American Indian", 9,399 identified as "Taíno". In total, 35,856 Puerto Ricans considered themselves Native American. A direct translation of the word "Taíno" signified "men of the good". Additionally, the name was used by the indigenous people of Hispaniola to indicate that they were "relatives"; the Taíno people, or Taíno culture, has been classified by some authorities as belonging to the Arawak, as their language was considered to belong to the Arawak language family, the languages of which were present throughout the Caribbean, much of Central and South America. The early ethnohistorian Daniel Garrison Brinton called the Taíno people the "Island Arawak". Contemporary scholars have recognized that the Taíno had developed a distinct language and culture. Taíno and Arawak appellations have been used with numerous and contradictory meanings by writers, historians and anthropologists.
They were used interchangeably. "Island Taíno" has been used to refer to those living in the Windward Islands only, to the northern Caribbean inhabitants only, as well as to the population of the entire Caribbean. Modern historians and anthropologists now hold that the term Taíno should refer to all the Taíno/Arawak nations except for the Caribs, who are not seen to belong to the same people. Linguists continue to debate whether the Carib language is an Arawakan dialect or creole language, or an individual language, with an Arawakan pidgin used for communication purposes. Rouse classifies as Taíno all inhabitants of the Greater Antilles, the Bahamian archipelago, the northern Lesser Antilles, he subdivides the Taíno into three main groups: Classic Taíno from Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic. Two schools of thought have emerged regarding the origin of the indigenous people of the Caribbean. One group of scholars contends that the ancestors of the Taíno came from the center of the Amazon Basin, are related to the Yanomama.
This is indicated by linguistic and ceramic evidence. They migrated to the Orinoco valley on the north coast. From there they reached the Caribbean by way of what is now Guyana and Venezuela into Trinidad, proceeding along the Lesser Antilles to Cuba and the Bahamian archipelago. Evidence that supports this theory includes the tracing of the ancestral cultures of these people to the Orinoco Valley and their languages to the Amazon Basin; the alternate theory, known as the circum-Caribbean theory, contends that the ancestors of the Taíno diffused from the Colombian Andes. Julian H. Steward, who originated this concept, suggests a migration from the Andes to the Caribbean and a parallel migration into Central America and into the Guianas and the Amazon Basin of South America. Taíno culture as documented is believed to have developed in the Caribbean; the Taíno creation story says that they emerged from caves in a sacred mountain on present-day Hispaniola. In Puerto Rico, 21st century studies have shown a high proportion
Petroglyph
Petroglyphs are images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images. Petroglyphs are found worldwide, are associated with prehistoric peoples; the word comes from the Greek prefix petro-, from πέτρα petra meaning "stone", γλύφω glýphō meaning "to carve", was coined in French as pétroglyphe. The term petroglyph should not be confused with petrograph, an image drawn or painted on a rock face. Both types of image belong to the more general category of rock art or parietal art. Petroforms, or patterns and shapes made by many large rocks and boulders over the ground, are quite different. Inuksuit are unique, found only in the Arctic. Another form of petroglyph found in literate cultures, a rock relief or rock-cut relief is a relief sculpture carved on "living rock" such as a cliff, rather than a detached piece of stone.
While these relief carvings are a category of rock art, sometimes found in conjunction with rock-cut architecture, they tend to be omitted in most works on rock art, which concentrate on engravings and paintings by prehistoric or nonliterate cultures. Some of these reliefs exploit the rock's natural properties to define an image. Rock reliefs have been made in many cultures in the ancient Near East. Rock reliefs are fairly large, as they need to be to make an impact in the open air. Most have figures. Stylistically, a culture's rock relief carvings relate to other types of sculpture from period concerned. Except for Hittite and Persian examples, they are discussed as part of the culture's sculptural practice; the vertical relief is most common, but reliefs on horizontal surfaces are found. The term relief excludes relief carvings inside natural or human-made caves, that are common in India. Natural rock formations made into statues or other sculpture in the round, most famously at the Great Sphinx of Giza, are usually excluded.
Reliefs on large boulders left in their natural location, like the Hittite İmamkullu relief, are to be included, but smaller boulders described as stele or carved orthostats. Some petroglyphs might be as old as 40,000 years, petroglyph sites in Australia are estimated to date back 27,000 years. Many petroglyphs are dated to the Neolithic and late Upper Paleolithic boundary, about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, if not earlier, such as Kamyana Mohyla. Around 7,000 to 9,000 years ago, other precursors of writing systems, such as pictographs and ideograms, began to appear. Petroglyphs were still common though, some cultures continued using them much longer until contact with Western culture was made in the 19th and 20th centuries. Petroglyphs have been found in all parts of the globe except Antarctica, with highest concentrations in parts of Africa, Siberia, southwestern North America, Australia. Many hypotheses explain the purpose of petroglyphs, depending on their location and subject matter; some many be astronomical markers and other forms of symbolic communication, including a form of proto-writing.
Petroglyph maps may show trails, symbols communicating time and distances traveled, as well as the local terrain in the form of rivers and other geographic features. A petroglyph that represents a landform or the surrounding terrain is known as a geocontourglyph, they might have been a by-product of other rituals: sites in India, for example, have been identified as musical instruments or "rock gongs". Some petroglyph images have deep cultural and religious significance for the societies that created them. Many petroglyphs are thought to represent some kind of not-yet-fully understood symbolic or ritual language. Glyphs from the Nordic Bronze Age in Scandinavia seem to refer to some form of territorial boundary between tribes, in addition to possible religious meanings. Petroglyph styles has regional "dialects" from similar or neighboring peoples. Siberian inscriptions loosely resemble an early form of runes, although no direct relationship has been established, they are not yet well understood.
Petrogylphs from different continents show similarities. While people would be inspired by their direct surroundings, it is harder to explain the common styles; this could be mere coincidence, an indication that certain groups of people migrated from some initial common area, or indication of a common origin. In 1853, George Tate presented a paper to the Berwick Naturalists' Club, at which a John Collingwood Bruce agreed that the carvings had "... a common origin, indicate a symbolic meaning, representing some popular thought." In his cataloguing of Scottish rock art, Ronald Morris summarized 104 different theories on their interpretation. More controversial explanations of similarities are grounded in Jungian psychology and the views of Mircea Eliade. According to these theories it is possible that the similarity of petroglyphs from different cultures and continents is a result of the genetically inherited structure of the human brain. Other theories suggest that petroglyphs were carved by spiritual leaders, such as shamans, in an altered state of consciousness induced by the use of natural hallucinogens.
Many of the geometric patterns which recur in petroglyphs and cave paintings have been shown by David Lewis-Williams to be hardwired into the human brain. They frequently
Houseboat
A houseboat is a boat, designed or modified to be used as a home. Some houseboats are not motorized, because they are moored, kept stationary at a fixed point and tethered to land to provide utilities. However, many are capable of operation under their own power. Float house is a American term for a house on a float. In Western countries, houseboats tend to be either owned or rented out to holiday-goers, on some canals in Europe, people dwell in houseboats all year round. Examples of this include, but are not limited to, Amsterdam and Paris. In Zimbabwe on Lake Kariba, houseboats have been in use since the creation of the lake in the late 1950s/early 1960s. A houseboat makes it easy to experience the Zambezi basin and all the associated wildlife, as a lot of game come down to the water for drinking and to cool down. There is a houseboat and fishing community on the southern side of Hong Kong Island known as Aberdeen floating village. There was one such community in the Yau Ma Tei Typhoon Shelter.
In India, houseboats as accommodation for tourists are common on the backwaters of Kerala, see below, on the Dal Lake near Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir. Houseboats in Kerala, south India, are slow-moving barges used for leisure trips, they are a reworked model of Kettuvallams, which, in earlier times, were used to carry rice and spices from Kuttanad to the Kochi port. Kerala houseboats were considered a convenient means of transportation; the popularity of Kettuvallams has returned in the function as major tourist attractions. Such a houseboat about 15 feet wide at the middle; the hull is made of wooden planks. The roof is made of bamboo poles and palm leaves; the exterior of the boat is painted with protective coats of cashew nut oil. Unlike their counterparts in Kerala, the houseboats in Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir are stationary, they are moored at the edges of the Dal Lake and Nageen lakes. Some of the houseboats there were built in the early 1900s, are still being rented out to tourists; these houseboats are made of wood and have intricately carved wood paneling.
The houseboats are of different sizes, some having up to three bedrooms apart from a living room and kitchen. Many tourists are attracted to Srinagar by the charm of staying on a houseboat, which provides the unique experience of living on the water in a cedar-paneled elegant bedroom, with all the conveniences of a luxury hotel. Srinagar's thousand or so houseboats are moored along sections of the Dal and Nagin Lakes and the Jhelum River, each decorated fancifully and named romantically and whimsically. Like hotels, houseboats vary in degree of luxury and have been accordingly graded by the Department of Tourism. A luxury houseboat, like a luxury hotel, has fine furniture, good carpets and modern bathroom fittings, while the'D category' of houseboats, like low-budget hotels, is spartanly furnished. Like hotels too, houseboats vary in their locations; some overlook the main road, others look out onto lotus gardens and others face tiny local markets and villages, which are floating on the lake.
All houseboats, regardless of category, have personalized service. Not only is there always a "houseboy" for every boat, but the owner and his family are close by; the cost per day of hiring a houseboat includes all meals and free rides from the houseboat to the nearest jetty and back, as no houseboat on the lakes is directly accessible from the banks. Every standard houseboat provides a balcony in the front, a lounge, dining room and three or more bedrooms with attached bathrooms. All houseboats not moored to the bank of the river or lakes provide a shikara as a free service from the houseboat to the nearest Ghat; every houseboat in Srinagar has been provided with a municipal water connection. In Laos, houseboats are used to accommodate tourists on the Mekong river; the houseboats are referred to as'slow boats' and exist in wooden or steel variants. The Port of Hamburg has a sizable water borne community that includes a Flussschifferkirche or Boatman's Church. Berlin has some houseboat neighborhoods, notably on the Landwehrkanal in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.
In Europe, some of the finest and costliest examples of houseboats can be seen along the canals of Amsterdam, which has houseboat hotels. Houseboats are expensive in Amsterdam because of the limited number of moorings; the Bloemenmarkt is a houseboat borne flower market along the Singel in Amsterdam. The town of Maasbommel is pioneering floating houses, with flexible connections for fluids and electricity. Houseboats are popular for recreation and clubbing in Serbia, they can be seen in large numbers in Belgrade on the banks of the Danube and Sava rivers, on river islands. In the United Kingdom, canal narrowboats are used as homes and as mobile, holiday accommodation. Narrowboats were used for bulk transport of raw materials and fuel on canals constructed at the start of the Industrial revolution. Nowadays, the canal network is used for recreation and is different from typical holiday locations, which are based in coastal or rural a
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a historic document, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly at its third session on 10 December 1948 as Resolution 217 at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, France. Of the 58 members of the United Nations, 48 voted in favor, none against, eight abstained, two did not vote; the Declaration consists of 30 articles affirming an individual's rights which, although not binding in themselves, have been elaborated in subsequent international treaties, economic transfers, regional human rights instruments, national constitutions, other laws. The Declaration was the first step in the process of formulating the International Bill of Human Rights, completed in 1966, came into force in 1976, after a sufficient number of countries had ratified them; some legal scholars have argued that because countries have invoked the Declaration for more than 50 years, it has become binding as a part of customary international law. However, in the United States, the Supreme Court in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, concluded that the Declaration "does not of its own force impose obligations as a matter of international law."
Courts of other countries have concluded that the Declaration is not in and of itself part of domestic law. The underlying structure of the Universal Declaration was introduced in its second draft, prepared by René Cassin. Cassin worked from a first draft, prepared by John Peters Humphrey; the structure was influenced by the Code Napoléon, including a preamble and introductory general principles. Cassin compared the Declaration to the portico of a Greek temple, with a foundation, four columns, a pediment; the Declaration consists of a preamble and thirty articles: The preamble sets out the historical and social causes that led to the necessity of drafting the Declaration. Articles 1–2 established the basic concepts of dignity, liberty and brotherhood. Articles 3–5 established other individual rights, such as the right to life and the prohibition of slavery and torture. Articles 6–11 refer to the fundamental legality of human rights with specific remedies cited for their defence when violated. Articles 12–17 established the rights of the individual towards the community.
Articles 18–21 sanctioned the so-called "constitutional liberties", with spiritual and political freedoms, such as freedom of thought, opinion and conscience, peaceful association of the individual. Articles 22–27 sanctioned an individual's economic and cultural rights, including healthcare. Article 25 states: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing and medical care and necessary social services." It makes additional accommodations for security in case of physical debilitation or disability, makes special mention of care given to those in motherhood or childhood. Articles 28–30 established the general ways of using these rights, the areas in which these rights of the individual can not be applied, that they can not be overcome against the individual; these articles are concerned with the duty of the individual to society and the prohibition of use of rights in contravention of the purposes of the United Nations Organisation.
During World War II, the Allies adopted the Four Freedoms—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from fear, freedom from want—as their basic war aims. The United Nations Charter "reaffirmed faith in fundamental human rights, dignity and worth of the human person" and committed all member states to promote "universal respect for, observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, language, or religion"; when the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany became apparent after World War II, the consensus within the world community was that the United Nations Charter did not sufficiently define the rights to which it referred. A universal declaration that specified the rights of individuals was necessary to give effect to the Charter's provisions on human rights. In June 1946, the UN Economic and Social Council established the Commission on Human Rights, comprising 18 members from various nationalities and political backgrounds; the Commission, a standing body of the United Nations, was constituted to undertake the work of preparing what was conceived as an International Bill of Rights.
The Commission established a special Universal Declaration of Human Rights Drafting Committee, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, to write the articles of the Declaration. The Committee met in two sessions over the course of two years. Canadian John Peters Humphrey, Director of the Division of Human Rights within the United Nations Secretariat, was called upon by the United Nations Secretary-General to work on the project and became the Declaration's principal drafter. At the time, Humphrey was newly appointed as Director of the Division of Human Rights within the United Nations Secretariat. Other well-known members of the drafting committee included René Cassin of France, Charles Malik of Lebanon, P. C. Chang of the Republic of China. Humphrey provided the initial draft. According to Allan Carlson, the Declaration's pro-family phrases were the result of the Christian Democratic movement's influence on Cassin and Malik. Once the Committee finished its work in May 1948, the draft was further discussed by the Commission on Human Rights, the Economic and Social Council, the Third Committee of the General Assembly before being put to vote in December 1948.
During these discussions many amendments and propositions were made by UN Member States. British re
Habitat
In ecology, a habitat is the type of natural environment in which a particular species of organism lives. It is characterized by both biological features. A species' habitat is those places where it can find food, shelter and mates for reproduction; the physical factors are for example soil, range of temperature, light intensity as well as biotic factors such as the availability of food and the presence or absence of predators. Every organism has certain habitat needs for the conditions in which it will thrive, but some are tolerant of wide variations while others are specific in their requirements. A habitat is not a geographical area, it can be the interior of a stem, a rotten log, a rock or a clump of moss, for a parasitic organism it is the body of its host, part of the host's body such as the digestive tract, or a single cell within the host's body. Habitat types include polar, temperate and tropical; the terrestrial vegetation type may be forest, grassland, semi-arid or desert. Fresh water habitats include marshes, rivers and ponds, marine habitats include salt marshes, the coast, the intertidal zone, reefs, the open sea, the sea bed, deep water and submarine vents.
Habitats change over time. This may be due to a violent event such as the eruption of a volcano, an earthquake, a tsunami, a wildfire or a change in oceanic currents. Other changes come as a direct result of human activities; the introduction of alien species can have a devastating effect on native wildlife, through increased predation, through competition for resources or through the introduction of pests and diseases to which the native species have no immunity. The word "habitat" has been in use since about 1755 and derives from the Latin habitāre, to inhabit, from habēre, to have or to hold. Habitat can be defined as the natural environment of an organism, the type of place in which it is natural for it to live and grow, it is similar in meaning to a biotope. The chief environmental factors affecting the distribution of living organisms are temperature, climate, soil type and light intensity, the presence or absence of all the requirements that the organism needs to sustain it. Speaking, animal communities are reliant on specific types of plant communities.
Some plants and animals are generalists, their habitat requirements are met in a wide range of locations. The small white butterfly for example is found on all the continents of the world apart from Antarctica, its larvae feed on a wide range of Brassicas and various other plant species, it thrives in any open location with diverse plant associations. The large blue butterfly is much more specific in its requirements. Disturbance is important in the creation of biodiverse habitats. In the absence of disturbance, a climax vegetation cover develops that prevents the establishment of other species. Wildflower meadows are sometimes created by conservationists but most of the flowering plants used are either annuals or biennials and disappear after a few years in the absence of patches of bare ground on which their seedlings can grow. Lightning strikes and toppled trees in tropical forests allow species richness to be maintained as pioneering species move in to fill the gaps created. Coastal habitats can become dominated by kelp until the seabed is disturbed by a storm and the algae swept away, or shifting sediment exposes new areas for colonisation.
Another cause of disturbance is when an area may be overwhelmed by an invasive introduced species, not kept under control by natural enemies in its new habitat. Terrestrial habitat types include forests, grasslands and deserts. Within these broad biomes are more specific habitats with varying climate types, temperature regimes, soils and vegetation types. Many of these habitats grade into each other and each one has its own typical communities of plants and animals. A habitat may suit a particular species well, but its presence or absence at any particular location depends to some extent on chance, on its dispersal abilities and its efficiency as a coloniser. Freshwater habitats include rivers, lakes, ponds and bogs. Although some organisms are found across most of these habitats, the majority have more specific requirements; the water velocity, its temperature and oxygen saturation are important factors, but in river systems, there are fast and slow sections, pools and backwaters which provide a range of habitats.
Aquatic plants can be floating, semi-submerged, submerged or grow in permanently or temporarily saturated soils besides bodies of water. Marginal plants provide important habitat for both invertebrates and vertebrates, submerged plants provide oxygenation of the water, absorb nutrients and play a part in the reduction of pollution. Marine habitats include brackish water, bays, the open sea, the intertidal zone, the sea bed and deep / shallow water zones. Further variations include rock pools, sand banks, brackish lagoons and pebbly beaches, seagrass beds, all supporting their own flora and fauna; the benth
Homo erectus
Homo erectus is a species of archaic humans that lived throughout most of the Pleistocene geological epoch. Its earliest fossil evidence dates to 1.8 million years ago. A debate regarding the classification and progeny of H. erectus in relation to Homo ergaster, is ongoing, with two major positions: 1) H. erectus is the same species as H. ergaster, thereby H. erectus is a direct ancestor of the hominins including Homo heidelbergensis, Homo antecessor, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo Denisova, Homo sapiens. Some paleoanthropologists consider H. ergaster to be a variety, that is, the "African" variety, of H. erectus. H. Erectus became extinct throughout its range in Africa and Asia, but developed into derived species, notably Homo heidelbergensis; as a chronospecies, the time of its disappearance is thus a matter of contention. The species name proposed in 1950 defines Java Man as the type specimen. Since there has been a trend in palaeoanthropology of reducing the number of proposed species of Homo, to the point where H. erectus includes all early forms of Homo sufficiently derived from H. habilis and distinct from early H. heidelbergensis.
In this wider sense, H. erectus had been replaced by H. heidelbergensis by about 300,000 years ago, with possible late survival in Java as late as 70,000 years ago. The discovery of the morphologically divergent Dmanisi skull 5 in 2013 has reinforced the trend of subsuming fossils given separate species names under H. erectus considered as a wide-ranging, polymorphous species. Thus, H. ergaster is now well within the accepted morphological range of H. erectus, it has been suggested that H. rudolfensis and H. habilis should be considered early varieties of H. erectus. The Dutch anatomist Eugène Dubois, inspired by Darwin's theory of evolution as it applied to humanity, set out in 1886 for Asia to find a human ancestor. In 1891–92, his team discovered first a tooth a skullcap, a femur of a human fossil on the island of Java, Dutch East Indies. Excavated from the bank of the Solo River at Trinil, in East Java, he first allocated the material to a genus of fossil chimpanzees as Anthropopithecus erectus the following year assigned his species to a new genus as Pithecanthropus erectus —from the Greek πίθηκος and ἄνθρωπος —based on the proposal that the femur suggested that the creature had been bipedal, like Homo sapiens.
Dubois' 1891 find was the first fossil of a Homo-species found as result of a directed expedition and search. The Java fossil from Indonesia aroused much public interest, it was dubbed by the popular press as Java Man. Most of the spectacular discoveries of H. erectus next took place at the Zhoukoudian Project, now known as the Peking Man site, in Zhoukoudian, China. This site was first discovered by Johan Gunnar Andersson in 1921 and was first excavated in 1921, produced two human teeth. Davidson Black's initial description of a lower molar as belonging to a unknown species prompted publicized interest. Extensive excavations followed, which altogether uncovered 200 human fossils from more than 40 individuals including five nearly complete skullcaps. Franz Weidenreich provided much of the detailed description of this material in several monographs published in the journal Palaeontologica Sinica. Nearly all of the original specimens were lost during World War II. Similarities between Java Man and Peking Man led Ernst Mayr to rename both Homo erectus in 1950.
Throughout much of the 20th century, anthropologists debated the role of H. erectus in human evolution. Early in the century, due in part to the discoveries at Java and Zhoukoudian, the belief that modern humans first evolved in Asia was accepted. A few naturalists—Charles Darwin most prominent among them—theorized that humans' earliest ancestors were African: Darwin pointed out that chimpanzees and gorillas, humans' closest relatives and exist only in Africa; the derivation of the genus Homo from Australopithecina took place in East Africa after 3 million years ago. The inclusion of species dated to just before 2 million years ago, Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis, into Homo is somewhat contentious; as H. habilis appears to have coexisted with H. ergaster/erectus for a substantial period after 2 Mya, it has been proposed that ergaster may not be directly derived from habilis. Homo erectus emerged about 2 million years ago. Fossils dated close to 1.8 million years ago have been found both in
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