Word: erectus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...bones found there are far more ancient than human remains found anywhere else. But when and why our ancestors first ventured away from the mother continent to take up residence in other parts of the world have been matters of debate. The conventional wisdom had long held that Homo erectus, the immediate ancestor of Homo sapiens, made the exodus about 1 million years ago, after developing relatively sophisticated stone tools that enabled him to gather food more efficiently during his wanderings...
...that wisdom was upset in 1994, when a Homo erectus skull from Indonesia was dated to 1.8 million years B.P. (before the present). And while that discovery was disputed by some scholars, a find reported in last week's Science should end all doubt. Cranial bones from two H. erectus individuals, discovered in Dmanisi, in the Republic of Georgia, have been dated to at least 1.7 million years B.P. What's more, researchers unearthed at the site primitive stone implements resembling those found at H. erectus digs in Africa, proving that fancy tools weren't the trigger for the departure...