Word: homo
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...rigors of prehistoric African life enabled members of the H. habilis clan to survive as a species for 500,000 years or more, and at least one group of them apparently evolved, around 2 million years B.P., into a taller, stronger, smarter variety of human. From the neck down, Homo erectus, on average about 5 ft. 6 in. tall, was probably almost indistinguishable from a modern human. Above the neck -- well, these were still primitive humans. The skulls have flattened foreheads and prominent brow ridges like those of a gorilla or chimpanzee, and the jawbone shows no hint of anything...
Gradually, anthropologists realized that all these fossils were from creatures so similar that they could be assigned to a single species: Homo erectus. Although the African bones were the last to be discovered, some were believed to be much more ancient than those found anywhere else. The most primitive Asian fossils were considered to be a million years old at most, but the African ones went back at least 1.8 million years. The relative ages, plus the fact that H. erectus' ancestors were found exclusively in Africa, led scientists to conclude that H. erectus first emerged on that continent...
...dates ended up validating Curtis' previous work. The Mojokerto child and the Sangiran fossils were about 1.8 million and 1.7 million years old, respectively, comparable in age to the oldest Homo erectus from Africa. Here, then, was a likely solution to one of the great mysteries of human evolution. Says Swisher: "We've always wondered why it would take so long for hominids to get out of Africa." The evident answer: it didn't take them much time at all, at least by prehistoric standards -- probably no more than 100,000 years, instead of nearly a million...
Scientists already have evidence that even the earliest hominids, the australopithecines, could survive in a variety of habitats and climates. Yale paleontologist Elisabeth Vrba believes that their evolutionary success -- and the subsequent thriving of the genus Homo as well -- was tied to climate changes taking place. About 2.5 million to 2.7 million years ago, an ice age sent global temperatures plummeting as much as 20F, prompting the conversion of moist African woodland into much drier, open savanna...
...question now: How does the apparent quick exit from Africa affect one of the most heated debates in the field of human evolution? On one side are anthropologists who hold to the "out of Africa" theory -- the idea that Homo sapiens first arose only in Africa. Their opponents champion the "multiregional hypothesis" -- the notion that modern humans evolved in several parts of the world...