HOMO ERECTUS LIFE, STRUCTURES, LANGUAGE, ART AND CULTURE

HOMO ERECTUS CULTURE AND THINKING

Homo erectus first evolved around 2 million years ago. Norman Owen-Smith wrote: Several hundred thousand years of progressive advancements in upright walking and brain capacity led to the next major adaptive shift, exemplified by improvements in the design of stone tools. Stone cores became shaped on both sides to aid the processing of animal carcasses. This led to the emergence of Homo erectus. These early humans had become efficient hunters. Consequently, meat and bones became reliable food resources year-round.A division of labour came about. Men hunted; women gathered plant parts. This required a home base and more elaborate forms of communication about planned excursions, laying the foundations for language. [Source: Norman Owen-Smith, Emeritus Research Professor of African Ecology, University of the Witwatersrand, The Conversation, January 26, 2023]

At the 350,000-year-old site in Bilzingsleben, archaeologists found pieces of bone and smooth stones arranged in a 27-foot-wide circle. "They intentionally paved this area for cultural activities," Dietrich Mania off the University of Jena, told National Geographic. "We found here a large anvil of quartzite set between the horns of a huge bison. Near it were fractured human skulls." Describing an elephant tibia engraved with a series a regular lines found at Bilzingsleben, Mania said, "Seven lines go in one direction, 21 go in the other. We have found other pieces of bone with cut lines that are also too regular to be accidental. They are graphic symbols. To us they are evidence of abstract thinking and human language." The tibia was dated at around 400,000 years ago.

Scientists debate whether 400,000-year-old hominins were capable of symbolic thinking, often regarded as hallmark of language. If Mania’s conjectures are correct, then ancient hominins could have been much more advanced than previously thought. In Zambia, scientists found what they said were 350,000-year-old ocher crayons. If these crayons had in fact been used to make drawings or markings they could be regarded as the oldest known attempt to paint, suggests that early man attempted create art much earlier than people thought.

Websites and Resources on Hominins and Human Origins: Smithsonian Human Origins Program humanorigins.si.edu ; Institute of Human Origins iho.asu.edu ; Becoming Human University of Arizona site becominghuman.org ; Hall of Human Origins American Museum of Natural History amnh.org/exhibitions ; The Bradshaw Foundation bradshawfoundation.com ; Britannica Human Evolution britannica.com ; Human Evolution handprint.com ; University of California Museum of Anthropology ucmp.berkeley.edu; John Hawks' Anthropology Weblog johnhawks.net/ ; New Scientist: Human Evolution newscientist.com/article-topic/human-evolution

Homo Erectus and Language

Some scientists have theorized that Homo erectus must have possessed some form of rudimentary language because it needed to communicate to organize hunts and pass on information about tool making. The parts of the Homo erectus brain associated with reasoning, symbolism and imagination though were relatively undeveloped.

Homo Erectus engraving?

The frontal lobe, where complex thinking takes place in modern humans, was relatively small. The small hole in its vertebrae probably meant that not enough information was transferred from the brain to the lungs, neck and mouth to make speech possible.

Ann MacLarson, an anthropologist at Roehampton Institute in London, told National Geographic: "With simple grunts you can communicate a lot. But he couldn't have produced anything like modern speech."

Scientists believe that man may have been able to speak as early as 400,000 years based on studies of the hypoglossal canal, an opening on the skull through which nerve fibers pass from the brain to the tongue. Humans have a larger hypoglossal canal than chimpanzees and evidence from 400,000 fossils seems to indicate that early man had a canal closer in size to a human canal than a chimpanzee canal.

Earliest Known Engraving: Homo Erectus Art?

A zigzag pattern found on the fossilised shell, dated to 430,000 years ago, in Java, Indonesia is believed to be the world’s earliest known engraving. It is thought to have been by homo erectus, demonstrating the species manual dexterity and perhaps symbolism and art. Australian Associated Press reported: “The find, reported in the journal Nature on Thursday, predates by some 300,000 years other markings made by modern humans or Neanderthals, previously thought the oldest. The age and location of the shell suggests the pattern was carved by an even earlier human ancestor known as Homo erectus. “It rewrites human history,” said Dr Stephen Munro, the Australian National University paleoanthropologist who made the find. [Source: Australian Associated Press, December 3, 2014]

“It suggests Homo erectus had considerable manual dexterity and possibly greater cognitive abilities, and raises the prospect that they might have been more “human” than previously thought. “That’s something people will argue about,” Munro said. Munro then worked with international colleagues to accurately date the shell and to check that the engraving wasn’t a more recent addition. They found that the engraving was indeed made before fossilisation occurred, probably between 430,000 and 540,000 years ago. It’s unclear whether the pattern was intended as art or served some other purpose.

“The ancient find would have been impossible without the very modern technology of digital photography. The shells, first discovered by celebrated Dutch scientist Eugene Dubois a century ago, have been packed away in boxes for years. On a Dutch public holiday in May 2007, Munro seized the opportunity to photograph every one. It took him all day. When he returned to Australia and flicked through the photos, one in particular stood out. An engraving, all but invisible to the naked eye, was quite clear. “It was a eureka moment,” he said. “I could see immediately that they were man-made engravings. There was no other explanation.”“

Homo Erectus Shelters and Buildings

The first houses were thought to be windbreaks made of animals skins stretched over a frame. There is evidence that Homo Erectus constructed 50-foot-long branch huts with stone slabs or animal skins for floors. A 1.75-million-year pile of lava blocks, arranged in a semi-circle, discovered by Mary Leakey, may have been footings for a windbreak. According to the Guinness Book of Records, this may be the world's oldest structure.

20120202-800px-Terra-Amata-Hut 2.gif
Terra Amata Hut, named after
a site in Italy, where 400,000-year-old tools were discovered Archaeology magazine reported: New dating of sediments from the Kalahari Desert’s Wonderwerk Cave suggests the shelter may be the oldest home ever inhabited by our human ancestors. Researchers believe the cave was occupied as long as 1.8 million years ago—the presence of hominins is indicated by the remains of primitive stone tools. Burned bone and ashes also found at the site may be the earliest known evidence of deliberate use of fire, around a million years ago. It is not clear which species lived there. Perhaps it was early homo erectus. [Source: Archaeology Magazine, July 2021]

Among the oldest recognized buildings in the world are twelve 400,000-year-old huts found in Nice, France in 1960. Uncovered by an excavator preparing to build a new house, the oval shelters ranged from 26 feet to 49 feet in length and were between 13 feet and 20 feet wide. They were built of 3-inch in diameter stakes and braced by a ring of stones. Longer poles were set around the perimeter as supports. The huts had hearths and pebble-lined pits and were defined by stake holes.

Ancient humans thought to be Homo erectus that lived 350,000 years ago near present-day Bilzingsleben, East Germany constructed shelters similar to those of Bushmen in southern Africa. Circular bone and stone foundations were discovered for three huts between 9 and 13 feet across. In the middle of on circle, archaeologist found an elephant tusk, which they speculated was a center post.

476,000-Year-Old Wooden Structure Unearthed in Zambia

In September 2023, scientists announced the discovery of a 476,000-year-old wooden structure in Zambia in an article published in Nature. Wood usually rots when exposed to air and quickly perishes. Perhaps numerous wooden objects were created by our human ancestors but we will never know because they disappeared completely long ago, The structure in Zambia was preserved in clay and shows the skillful use of wood by archaic hominins. [Source: Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, February 3, 2024]

Victoria Gill of the BBC wrote: The discovery of ancient wooden logs in the banks of a river in Zambia has changed archaeologists' understanding of ancient human life. Researchers found evidence the wood had been used to build a structure almost half a million years ago. "This find has changed how I think about our early ancestors," archaeologist Prof Larry Barham said. The University of Liverpool scientist leads the Deep Roots of Humanity research project, which excavated and analysed the ancient timber. "They made something new, and large, from wood," Prof Barham said."They used their intelligence, imagination and skills to create something they'd never seen before, something that had never previously existed." [Source: Victoria Gill, BBC News, September 21, 2023]

The structure consists of two interlocking wooden logs made large-fruited bushwillow (Combretum zeyheri), connected by a notch securing one perpendicular to the other. The smaller log, measuring 141.3 centimeters (55.6 inches) in length, has tapered ends as well as a U-shaped notch and overlies the larger log, which passes through the notch. According to Duller, the structure probably would have been part of a wooden platform perhaps to keep food or firewood dry, or perhaps as a base on which to build a dwelling. The notch in the upper log shows evidence of having been made through scraping and adzing, with fire use also hinted at by infrared spectroscopy. The underlying trunk shows evidence of striations with V-shaped cutmarks, both at its midpoint and along the narrowed end going through the notch, also indicative of possible scraping. Another wooden log, showing tapered ends and a similar notch, had previously been described in Site B of Kalambo Falls, also from the Acheulean, although not conclusively identified as part of a hominid-made structure at the time. The wooden tools found along with the structure include a wedge and a digging stick. They have been found in several areas across the BLB site, and are younger than the structure itself, having been dated to between 390,000 and 324,000 years ago. [Source: Wikipedia]

476,000-Year-Old Wooden Structure Shows Carpentry Skill of Early Hominins

Eric A. Powell wrote in Archaeology magazine: Rarely has a single find changed scholars’ views of the capabilities of people of the past as radically as the discovery of the world’s earliest known wooden architecture. Researchers believe the logs may have formed part of a walkway or the foundation of a platform built over wetlands. Prior to this discovery, the oldest known surviving wooden structures were built by people living in northern England around 11,000 years ago.

At the same site, the team unearthed stone axes as well as four wooden tools dating to between 390,000 and 324,000 years ago. These included a digging stick, a wedge-shaped object, a notched branch, and a flattened log. Marks on the log, notes Barham, resemble nothing so much as tool nicks on a work bench, inviting speculation as to what other structures an imaginative H. heidelbergensis woodworker might have fashioned.

Shaping marks on the upper surfaces and on the underlying tree trunk (arrows indicating cutmarks) on the 476,000-Year-Old Kalambo wooden structure unearthed in Zambia; Clockwise, from left: A) upper left chop marks on Part 2; B) cluster of small convex hewing marks on Part 1, near Part 2; C) cutmark (upper arrow) and small facets (lower arrows) on Part 1 near Part 3 ; D) intercutting chop marks on the upper right edge of the Part 3 taper; E) underlying log

Victoria Gill of the BBC wrote: The researchers also uncovered ancient wooden tools, including digging sticks. But what excited them most were two pieces of wood found at right angles to each other. "One is lying over the other and both pieces of wood have notches cut into them," University of Aberystwyth archaeologist Prof Geoff Duller said. "You can clearly see those notches have been cut by stone tools. It makes the two logs fit together to become structural objects." Further analysis confirmed the logs were about 476,000 years old. Team member Perrice Nkombwe, from the Livingstone Museum, in Zambia, said: "I was amazed to know that woodworking was such a deep-rooted tradition. "It dawned on me that we had uncovered something extraordinary." [Source: Victoria Gill, BBC News, September 21, 2023]

Dating and Recovery of the 476,000-Year-Old Wooden Structure in Zambia

The structure is now referred to as the Kalambo structure. So far two pieces have been uncovered along with other wooden tools. It was discovered at the site of Kalambo Falls, Zambia — home of the Kalambo Falls Prehistoric Site. Excavations at Kalambo Falls in the 1950s and 1960s recovered wooden artifacts of possible hominin origin, although wear and other taphonomic processes prevented scientists from ascertaining the origin of the artifacts with certainty. he structure and accompanying tools were recovered in 2019 at Site BLB around the Kalambo River. The structure itself was found in area BLB5, located below the river, in association with Acheulean artifacts. Geoff Duller, who was part of the team that made the discovery in 2019, said high water levels and fine sediment encasing the structure helped to preserve the wood. [Source: Wikipedia]

Victoria Gill of the BBC wrote: Until now, evidence for the human use of wood has been limited to making fire and crafting tools such as digging sticks and spears. One of the oldest wooden discoveries was a 400,000-year-old spear in prehistoric sands at Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, in 1911. Unless it is preserved in very specific conditions, wood simply rots away. [Source: Victoria Gill, BBC News, September 21, 2023]

But in the meandering riverbanks above the Kalambo Falls, close to the Zambia-Tanzania border, it was waterlogged and essentially pickled for millennia. The team measured the age of layers of earth in which it was buried, using luminescence dating. Grains of rock absorb natural radioactivity from the environment over time - essentially charging up like tiny batteries, as Prof Duller put it. And that radioactivity can be released and measured by heating up the grains and analysing the light emitted.

Scientists created models to show how the interlocking, structural logs could have been used The size of the two logs, the smaller of which is about 1.5m (5ft), suggests whoever fitted them together was building something substantial. Unlikely to have been a hut or permanent dwelling, it could have formed part of a platform for a shelter, the team says. "It might be some sort of structure to sit beside the river and fish," Prof Duller said:. "But it's hard to tell what sort of [complete] structure it might have been."

Which Hominins Built the 476,000-Year-Old Wooden Structure in Zambia

It is also unclear what species of ancient human - or hominid - built it. No bones have been found at this site so far. And the timber is much older than the earliest modern human — or Homo sapien — fossils. It is also unclear what species of ancient human - or hominid - built it. No bones have been found at this site so far. And the timber is much older than the earliest modern human - or Homo sapien - fossils, which are about 315,000 years old. According to Archaeology magazine: The 476,000-year-old log structure was likely the handiwork of the archaic human species Homo heidelbergensis. Paleoanthropologists believe H. heidelbergensis was highly mobile. Thus, it is surprising that the hominins would have invested labor in building a semipermanent structure. [Source: Eric A. Powell, Archaeology magazine, January/February 2024]

"It could have been Homo sapiens and we just haven't discovered fossils from that age yet," Prof Duller told the BBC. "But it could be a different species - Homo erectus or Homo naledi - there were a number of hominid species around at that time in southern Africa." “We haven’t seen archaic humans manipulating their environment on such a large scale before,” says Barham. “It suggests an attachment to a single point on the landscape.”

The discovery could indicate that the hominins who lived at Kalambo Falls may have had a settled lifestyle, which could challenge the prevailing view that Stone Age hominins had a nomadic lifestyle. Barham believes that wooden tools were potentially even more common than stone tools in the Stone Age. He theorizes the likely co-evolution of wooden and stone tools, linking innovations shown by the Kalambo structure to the later invention of hafting, with several parts linked together in a single tool. The timing of the construction of the Kalambo structure coincides with a period of forest coverage of the Kalambo River basin. Barham's team believes the high resource availability of the environment, a permanently elevated water table, and the improvement brought by constructing elevated structures above the floodplain created a habitat conducive to sustained occupation. [Source: Wikipedia]

Homo Erectus Tools

Homo erectus tool from Yuanmou, China

Homo erectus was the first to use fire and sophisticated tools. Unlike earlier hominins that developed crude choppers and flakes,Homo erectus produced sophisticated stone axes and used sharp stone cleavers and finger-size scrapers used slice off chewable sizes of meat. "Tools gave them access to elephants, wildebeest — bonanzas so big they couldn't eat it all," Nick Toth, an archaeologist from Indiana University told National Geographic. Homo erectus made the first wooden spears and first wooden bowls. Using stone anvils and point pressure tools, Homo erectus was able to fashion large tool heads and fine long blades, sharpened on both sides. They made hunting tools with spear points for throwing and thrusting and ax heads for chopping and dismembering carcasses. Perhaps they used cooperative skills in hunting to drive rhinos, elephants or mammoths over cliffs or into swamps.

Blades dated to 240,000 year ago made from long slivers of stones in the Rift Valley are so skillfully crafted from difficult-to-work obsidian and lava, that some anthropologists argue that they required abstract thought to make.

Some tools associated with Homo erectus however were also relatively primitive. The tools found at sites Dmanisi, Georgia consisted of rock “cores” and primitive choppers, not much sophisticated than those made by Homo habilis and possibly Australopithecus.

Hominin Practiced Recycling?

In 2013, Associated Press reported: “There is mounting evidence that hundreds of thousands of years ago, our prehistoric ancestors learned to recycle the objects they used in their daily lives, say researchers gathered at an international conference in Israel. "For the first time we are revealing the extent of this phenomenon, both in terms of the amount of recycling that went on and the different methods used," said Ran Barkai, an archaeologist and one of the organizers of the four-day gathering at Tel Aviv University” in October 2013. [Source: Associated Press, October 11, 2013 +++]

“Just as today we recycle materials such as paper and plastic to manufacture new items, early hominins would collect discarded or broken tools made of flint and bone to create new utensils, Barkai said. The behavior "appeared at different times, in different places, with different methods according to the context and the availability of raw materials," he told The Associated Press. From caves in Spain and North Africa to sites in Italy and Israel, archaeologists have been finding such recycled tools in recent years. The conference, titled "The Origins of Recycling," gathered nearly 50 scholars from about 10 countries to compare notes and figure out what the phenomenon meant for our ancestors. +++

“Recycling was widespread not only among early humans but among our evolutionary predecessors such as Homo erectus, Neanderthals and other species of hominins that have not yet even been named, Barkai said. Avi Gopher, a Tel Aviv University archaeologist, said the early appearance of recycling highlights its role as a basic survival strategy. While they may not have been driven by concerns over pollution and the environment, hominins shared some of our motivations, he said. "Why do we recycle plastic? To conserve energy and raw materials," Gopher said. "In the same way, if you recycled flint you didn't have to go all the way to the quarry to get more, so you conserved your energy and saved on the material." +++

“Some participants argued that scholars should be cautious to draw parallels between this ancient behavior and the current forms of systematic recycling, driven by mass production and environmental concerns. "It is very useful to think about prehistoric recycling," said Daniel Amick, a professor of anthropology at Chicago's Loyola University. "But I think that when they recycled they did so on an 'ad hoc' basis, when the need arose."” +++

Examples of Hominin Recycling?

shell with Homo erectus engraving

According to Associated Press: “Some cases may date as far back as 1.3 million years ago, according to finds in Fuente Nueva, on the shores of a prehistoric lake in southern Spain, said Deborah Barsky, an archaeologist with the University of Tarragona. Here there was only basic reworking of flint and it was hard to tell whether this was really recycling, she said. "I think it was just something you picked up unconsciously and used to make something else," Barsky said. "Only after years and years does this become systematic." [Source: Associated Press, October 11, 2013 +++]

“That started happening about half a million years ago or later, scholars said. For example, a dry pond in Castel di Guido, near Rome, has yielded bone tools used some 300,000 years ago by Neanderthals who hunted or scavenged elephant carcasses there, said Giovanni Boschian, a geologist from the University of Pisa. "We find several levels of reuse and recycling," he said. "The bones were shattered to extract the marrow, then the fragments were shaped into tools, abandoned, and finally reworked to be used again." +++

“At other sites, stone hand-axes and discarded flint flakes would often function as core material to create smaller tools like blades and scrapers. Sometimes hominins found a use even for the tiny flakes that flew off the stone during the knapping process. At Qesem cave, a site near Tel Aviv dating back to between 200,000 and 420,000 years ago, Gopher and Barkai uncovered flint chips that had been reshaped into small blades to cut meat - a primitive form of cutlery. Some 10 percent of the tools found at the site were recycled in some way, Gopher said. "It was not an occasional behavior; it was part of the way they did things, part of their way of life," he said. +++

“He said scientists have various ways to determine if a tool was recycled. They can find direct evidence of retouching and reuse, or they can look at the object's patina - a progressive discoloration that occurs once stone is exposed to the elements. Differences in the patina indicate that a fresh layer of material was exposed hundreds or thousands of years after the tool's first incarnation.” +++

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, engravings from Science News, Spanish hand ax, Nature

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated May 2024