368 Evolution? The Fossils Say YES!
erectus” or “Java Man”) have been dated at that age (Swisher et al. 2000), and specimens are
also known from elsewhere in Eurasia, such as Romania, that are almost as old. By about
500,000 years ago, we have abundant fossils of H. erectus in many parts of Eurasia, includ-
ing the famous specimens from the Chinese caves at Zhokoudian, known as “Peking Man”
and dated as old as 460,000 years ago. The latest dating suggests that H. erectus may have
persisted as recently as 27,000 years ago, outlasting even the Neanderthals and overlapping
with modern H. sapiens (Swisher et al. 2000). Homo erectus was thus the first member of our
family to live outside Africa, and it roamed through the entire Old World (except Australia
and the glaciated regions). Homo erectus was not only the first widespread hominin species
but also one of the most successful and long-lived species, spanning more than 1.8 million
years in duration between 1.9 and 0.03 million years ago. During most of that long time, it
was the only species of Homo on the planet and changed very little in brain size or body pro-
portions. If longevity is a measure of success, then it could be argued that it was even more
successful than we are.
By about 300,000 years ago, another species was established in western Europe and the
Near East: the Neanderthals. These were the first fossil humans to be discovered, although
they were originally dismissed as the remains of diseased Cossacks that had died in caves.
The first complete descriptions of skeletons were based on a specimen that suffered from
old age and disease, so for decades Neanderthals were thought to be stoop-shouldered
and primitive, the classic stereotypical grunting “cavemen.” Modern research (Stringer
and Gamble 1993) has shown that Neanderthals were very different from this stereotype.
Although their skulls are distinct from ours in having a protruding face, large brow ridges,
no chin, and a flatter skull that sticks out in the back (fig. 15.8), they had a slightly larger
brain capacity than we do, and they practiced a complex culture. The famous discover-
ies at Shanidar Cave in Iraq showed that Neanderthals buried their dead with elaborate
religious rituals and even flowers, suggesting that they had at least some kind of reli-
gious beliefs and possibly belief in an afterlife. Their bones (and presumably bodies) were
robust and muscular and slightly shorter than the average modern human, but they also
lived exclusively in the cold climates of the glacial margin of Europe and the Middle East,
where their stocky build (similar to a modern Inuit or Laplander) would be an advantage.
Their tool kits and culture were also more complex, with Mousterian hand axes, spear-
heads, arrowheads, and other complex devices, as well as bone and wooden tools. Some of
these tools show complex working and simple carving, so they were artistic as no hominin
before had ever been.
For decades, anthropologists treated Neanderthals as a subspecies of Homo sapiens, but
recent work suggests that they were a distinct species. The best evidence of this comes
from the Skhul and Qafzeh caves in Israel, where layers bearing Neanderthal remains
are interbedded and alternate with layers containing early modern humans. In addition,
Neanderthals appeared later than the earliest archaic Homo sapiens, so they could not be
our ancestors but rather an extinct European side branch. Recently their DNA has been
sequenced and they are clearly not Homo sapiens, but now there is some evidence that all
modern humans have a bit of Neanderthal DNA in them, so there must have been some
interbreeding between the two species. DNA analysis of just two tiny bones from Denisova
Cave in Siberia has revealed the existence of yet another species of humans, the Denisovans,
who are poorly known at this time.