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Homo erectus (/ ˌ h oʊ m oʊ ə ˈ r ɛ k t ə s / lit. ' upright man ') is an extinct species of archaic human from the Pleistocene, spanning nearly 2 million years.It is the first human species to evolve a humanlike body plan and gait, to leave Africa and colonize Asia and Europe, and to wield fire.
Homo (from Latin homō 'human') is a genus of great ape (family Hominidae) that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses only a single extant species, Homo sapiens (modern humans), along with a number of extinct species (collectively called archaic humans) classified as either ancestral or closely related to modern humans; these include Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis.
The most reliable published ages range from 150,000 to 250,000 years before today. The morphology of the skull indicates, however, that it could be older, perhaps 250,000–300,000 years old. Poulianos, on the other hand, believed that the Petralona cranium is derived from an independent class of hominids unrelated to Homo erectus.
Reconstruction of a female H. erectus. Homo erectus derives from early Homo or late Australopithecus. Homo habilis, although significantly different of anatomy and physiology, is thought to be the ancestor of Homo ergaster, or African Homo erectus; but it is also known to have coexisted with H. erectus for almost half a million years
Edgar Morin, 1973 The Lost Paradigm: Human Nature: Homo deus "human god" Man as god, endowed with supernatural abilities such as eternal life as outlined in Yuval Noah Harari's 2015 book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow: Homo dictyous "network man" Humankind as having a brain evolved for social connections Homo discens "learning man"
Fossil KNM-ER 1470 (discovered in 1972, designated Pithecanthropus rudolfensis by Alekseyev 1978) is now seen as either a third early species of Homo (alongside H. habilis and H. erectus) at about 2 million years ago, or alternatively as transitional between Australopithecus and Homo.
Java Man (Homo erectus erectus, formerly also Anthropopithecus erectus or Pithecanthropus erectus) is an early human fossil discovered in 1891 and 1892 on the island of Java (Indonesia). Estimated to be between 700,000 and 1,490,000 years old, it was, at the time of its discovery, the oldest hominid fossil ever found, and it remains the type ...
They also state that a less parsimonious explanation would be the accommodation of two contemporary species, as they find the specimen is not referrable to Homo erectus, H. ergaster, H. heidelbergensis, or H. rhodesiensis. In fact, they recommend creation of a new name to represent a transition from late African to early European fossils.