HOMO HABILIS
Homo habilis Homo habilis, meaning "handy man," was dramatically different from his predecessors. This hominin appeared around the same time as the first relatively advanced stone tools. Some scientists suggest the transformation from Australopithecus to Homo habilis was brought about by climatic changes.
Norman Owen-Smith wrote: Around 2.8 million years ago, another lineage split off from the australopithecines, reversing the trend towards robust dentition. This lineage used stones chipped to serve as tools. These were used to scrape flesh from carcasses of animals killed by carnivores, and crack open long bones for their marrow content. This transition in ecology was sufficiently momentous to warrant a new generic name: Homo, specifically habilis.[Source: Norman Owen-Smith, Emeritus Research Professor of African Ecology, University of the Witwatersrand, The Conversation, January 26, 2023]
These first humans thus became scavengers on animal left-overs. They most probably exploited a time window around midday when the killers — mainly sabre-tooth cats — were resting, before hyenas arrived nocturnally to devour the leftovers. Walking upright freed their arms to carry bones away to be processed in safe sites to augment the plant-based dietary staples. To facilitate such midday movements, Homo habilis lost its body hair; this made it possible for them to be active under conditions when fur-covered animals would soon over-heat.
Geologic Age 1.4 million to 2.5 million years. Very few “H. habalis” remains have been found, but scientists speculate he survived about a half a million years. He lived at same time as Australopithecus boisei. Linkage to Modern Man: Seen as direct ancestor. Not clear what Australopithecus species he evolved from.
Discovery Sites: Eastern and southern Africa. Discovered at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania in 1959 by Mary Leakey and found near Lake Turkana at Koobi Fara, Kenya by B. Ngeneo and the Sterkfontein and Swartkrans in South Africa. Leakeys. The Lake Turkana remains are housed at National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi.
Homo habilis Body Features and Size
Size: Small compared to modern humans. males: 1.32 meters (4 feet 4 inches); females: 1.17 meters (3 feet 10 inches), 32 kilograms (71 pounds). Skull Features: Primitive face, back teeth narrower. Larger brain and smaller human-like jaws and teeth than those found on Australopithecus species. Body Features: More similar to modern man.
Brain Size: 630 cubic centimeters, significantly larger than predecessors. Although half the size of modern man's brain, it's brain was large relative to body size and almost the same relative size as the brain of modern man. There was a pronounced bulge in the area of the brain associated with speech. Scientists say it probably didn't speak because it's vocal chords were not developed enough. A human brain is about 1,350 cubic centimeters. A chimpanzee’s brain is 390 cubic centimeters.
A February 2009 article in Science announced the discovery of 1.53-million -year-old footprints found at Ileret, Kenya. The footprints, likely made by early “Homo habilis” or “Homo ergaster”, were heralded as the earliest evidence of modern upright walking. The large toe was parallel to the other toes, indicating an upright posture. The 3.6-million-year-old prints found in Tanzania and attributed to an Australopithecus species indicated an upright posture but had a shallower arch and an apelike divergent toe. The discovery was announced by a team led by Matthew Bennet of Bournemouth University in Britain.
Homo habilis Tools
“Homo habilis” appeared around the same time as the first stone tools, which included cobbles and choppers made from lava. Some of the tools were made of materials not found in the area where the tools were found. This implies the materials were carried to the area where they were found from a distant site, which in turn implies the transportation of goods of even trade.
“Homo habilis” consisted mostly fist-size hammerstones and small, sharp flakes. Scientists believe that “Homo habilis “ and his tools were too small too hunt large prey. The tools, they theorize, were used mainly to fight off competing scavengers for the large carnivores such as lions and cut the hides and break open the bones of their scavenged meals. “Homo habilis “ deliberately hammered and shaped rocks into these tools.
Homo Habilis and Homo Erectus
Homo Habilis tooth In an August 2007 article in Nature, Maeve Leakey of the Koobi Fora Research Project announced her team had found an upper jawbone of a “Homo habilis” east of Lake Turkana in eastern Kenya dated to 1.44 million years ago, making it much more recent than other fossils from the species.
It had previously been theorized that “Homo habilis” and “Homo erectus” lived at different times and “Homo erectus” evolved from “Homo habilis”. The discovery by Leakey’s team however seems to counter this finding, suggesting that the two hominins lived together for around a half million years, which in turn makes it unlikely that “Homo erectus” evolved from “Homo habilis”.The finding does not challenge the theory that “Homo erectus” are the direct ancestors of modern humans but it does call into question whether “Homo habilis” was.
Scientists now theorize that “Homo habilis” and “Homo erectus” had a common ancestor that lived between two million and three million years ago, a period in which there is little data and few fossils. Leakey told the New York Times that the finding of her group suggests “Homo habilis” and “Homo erectus” “had their own ecological niche thus avoiding direct competition...Their coexistence makes its unlikely that Homo erectus evolved from Homo habilis.” Fred Spoor, a Leakey colleague from the University College of London, said the finding contradicts previous theories that present human evolution “as one strong single line from early hominins to us” and supports the revised interpretation of “a lot of bushiness and experimentation in the fossil record.”
The 1.44 million-year-old “Homo habilis” fossils were found several years before but extra care was taken identifying the species and dating the fossils, which was done from volcanic ash deposits, to make sure they got it right since the implications of the finding are so dramatic.
Are Hobbits Evidence That Homo Habalis Left Africa?
The origin of Homo floresiensis (the hobbits of Indonesia) raises some interesting questions, one being that they could be descendants of predecessor of homo erectus —homo habalis or even a Australopithecus species — and this in turn could mean homo habalis or Australopithecus species could have emerged from Africa before Homo erectus.
Deborah Netburn wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “One hypothesis posits that Homo floresiensis descended from the large-bodied hominin Homo erectus that lived between 1.89 million and 143,000 years ago. Scientists say it is possible that Homo erectus may have arrived on Flores from Java, perhaps after being washed out to sea by a tsunami. Over time, this species began to shrink on its new island home – a relatively common phenomenon known as island dwarfism. “Lots of animals that end up on islands get smaller for a variety of reasons like limited food sources, or because there are no large predators to stay big for,” said Karen Baab, a paleoanthropologist at Midwestern University in Glendale, Ariz., who was not involved in the study. “We even see it in modern humans in certain environments that are home to pygmy populations.” [Source: Deborah Netburn, Los Angeles Times, June 8, 2016 */]
“The other hypothesis states that Hobbits descended from smaller and more ancient hominins like Australopithecus africanus or Homo habilis that were already diminutive at the time they reached the island. Both theories have challenges. One might accept that Homo erectus grew smaller in stature by two-thirds over time. After all, a smaller body is easier to feed. But for some scientists, it is hard to believe that it made evolutionary sense for its brain to shrink by half. Losing brain power doesn’t seem like a likely evolutionary development. On the other hand, if you buy that Homo floresiensis was descended from Australopithecus or Homo habilis, then you have to explain how either of these species made their way to Indonesia when their remains have never been found outside of Africa. */.
Homo habalis skull from Koobi Fora
A bone study published in 2017 in the Journal of Human Evolution showed there was nothing to support claims that Homo floresiensis evolved from Homo erectus, which scientists say was an ancestor of modern humans, and thus did not have any direct links modern humans. Teeth similarities had been suggested as evidence that homo erectus and hobbits were linked.
Melissa Davey wrote in The Guardian: “The study, led by the Australian National University researcher Dr Debbie Argue from the school of archaeology and anthropology, found there was no evidence Homo floresiensis evolved from the much larger Homo erectus, the only other early hominin known to have lived in the region. It was one of several theories about the origins of the “hobbit” species. Since it was discovered, researchers have tried to determine whether Homo floresiensis was a species distinct from humans. [Source: Melissa Davey, The Guardian, April 21, 2017]
“The findings add support to the theory that the species evolved from one in Africa, most likely Homo habilis, and that the two species shared a common ancestor. It was possible that Homo floresiensis evolved in Africa and migrated, or the common ancestor moved from Africa and then evolved into Homo floresiensis somewhere, the researchers concluded. Prof Mike Lee of Flinders University and the South Australian Museum used statistical modelling to analyse the data collected by the researchers. He said the findings were clear. Homo floresiensis occupied a very primitive position on the human evolutionary tree,” Lee said. “We can be 99 percent sure it’s not related to Homo erectus and nearly 100 percent it isn’t a malformed Homo sapiens.” |=|
There is a good evidence that a relatively large human that lived 700,000 years ago and shrunk quickly and stayed that size ago is an ancestor of Homo floresiensis according to two studies published in Nature in June 2016. Marlowe Hood of AFP wrote: “A modest haul of teeth and bones from an adult and two children has bolstered the theory that Homo floresiensis arrived on Flores island as a different, larger species of hominin, or early man, probably about a million years ago. And then, something very strange happened. These upright, tool-wielding humans shrank, generation after generation, until they were barely half their original weight and height. [Source: Marlowe Hood, AFP, June 9, 2016 \^/]
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP and various books and other publications.
Last updated April 2024