Yesterday I mentioned that anthropology always moves things back in time and to set an Adam at a time which can easily be disprovable is not smart. Well I just learned that it has happened again. But first, Hugh Ross used to say that Neanderthal was not human because he had no art. Now it is Neanderthal art which is the oldest art in the world. But then, Hugh’s donors define what he can and cant say about particular pieces of data. I have had the freedom to think what I want to about anthropology.
This morning I found out that a new H. erectus skull has been found moving H. erectus back 200 kyr. Here is the abstract from Sciecnce:
"The DNH 134 cranium shares clear affinities with Homo erectus, whereas the DNH 152 cranium represents P. robustus. Stratigraphic analysis of the Drimolen Main Quarry deposits indicates that unlike many other South African sites, there was only one major phase of relatively short deposition between ~2.04 million years ago and ~1.95 million years ago. This age has been constrained by the identification of the ~1.95-million-year-old magnetic field reversal at the base of the Olduvai SubChron within the sediments and by the direct uranium-lead dating of a flowstone that formed during the reversal. This has been augmented by direct dating on fossils by means of US-ESR that suggests that the DNH 134 and DNH 152 crania were deposited just before this reversal, with the DNH 134 crania deposited at ~2.04 million years ago. The DNH 134 cranium shares affinities with H. erectus and predates all known specimens in that species. The age range of Drimolen Main Quarry overlaps with that of Australopithecus sediba from the nearby site of Malapa and indicates that Homo, Paranthropus, and Australopithecus were contemporaneous in South Africa between 2.04 million and 1.95 million years ago. It is the first time that dating has conclusively demonstrated that these three taxa shared the same landscape during the same time range, making it less likely that a population of A. sediba is ancestral to Homo, as has been previously suggested. Analysis of fauna preserved at Drimolen documents a period of ecological change, with earlier South African species going extinct and new species moving into the region from other parts of Africa, including early representatives of H. erectus. Andy I. R. Herries, et al,** Contemporaneity of Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and early Homo erectus in South Africa **, Science April 3, 2020, p. 368
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6486/eaaw7293
In March, H. erectus was 1.8 myr old, now, it is 2 myr. Have we found the very oldest H. erectus that will ever be found? I don’t think so, although it might be a while before he next one is found.
I would suggest a definition of human as those who show the traits of God’s curse in Eden–H. erectus and H. habilis both show that their women had pain in childbirth–the curse of a big head.