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Homo erectus

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Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology

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Introduction

Homo erectus is a geographically widespread and temporally long-lasting fossil hominin species known from Africa and Asia between c. 1.9 Ma and 500 ka (but perhaps to <100 ka). The taxon subsumes a large amount of skeletal variation, and one of the central debates concerns whether this variation should be partitioned into multiple species. Homo erectus was the first hominin to disperse out of Africa as well as the first to take important steps toward modern human form, development, and behavior. Homo erectus has traditionally held a canonical position in hominin evolution, chronologically succeeding Homo habilis and preceding Homo sapiens. However, this simple time-successive progression has been complicated by additional fossil discoveries in Africa that confirm the presence of multiple species of non-erectus early Homo (Leakey et al. 2012) as well as the temporal and geographic overlap of Homo erectus and Homo habilis (Spoor et al. 2007). Nonetheless, H. erectusremains...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA

    Emily R. Middleton

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Emily R. Middleton

  3. Department of Anthropology, New York University and New York Consortium for Evolutionary Primatology, New York, NY, USA

    Susan C. Antón

Authors
  1. Emily R. Middleton
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  2. Susan C. Antón
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Correspondence to Emily R. Middleton .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Claire Smith

Section Editor information

  1. Department of World Cultures, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Chen Shen

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Middleton, E.R., Antón, S.C. (2020). Homo erectus . In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30018-0_687

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