Down from the trees, out from the brush, thousands of generations our ancestor, the last specie of hominid before ours walked through and out of Africa. People with thoughts, but without language. People with a world to explore, and no maps. There were hominids for millions of years already, but these people, the Homo Erectus, were different. They had come into their own as the first true hunters, predators in their own right.
Fearless, and wordless. For Homo Erectus, communication was limited to gestures and grunts, and nothing more. The larynx was not yet in the right position to allow for the range of sounds we’re capable of, the range needed for complex speech. Still, even these gestures and grunts were well beyond anything that had been done before. The human ability to communicate was developing. Homo Erectus had more advanced and modern vocal tracts than Homo Habilis before him. As well, the Broca’s area had evolved, a specific location in the brain important for language. 250, 000 years ago, according to anthropologist Leslie Aiello, communication needed to develop to handle more involved social situations and plan activities in groups, such as hunts. Before this, man was more of a solitary creature. Things were changing. They had to.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” – George Orwell
Reading about lizards that can stick to walls, cephalopods that can change color in a fraction of a second, or snakes with enough venom to kill a hundred people in one bite (the Taipan, of Australia), it’s easy to feel humbled as a relatively weak specie. The standard fallback is that, well, despite seemingly uninteresting (and not very formidable) bodies, we’re smarter than everything else. We have rational thought. That’s our superpower. Much as that may be true, reason is not our only ability, nor is it our first claim to fame.
Of all species on earth, we have by far the most accurate throw. Actually, very few animals can throw a projectile at all. Animals like elephants and chimpanzees can, but nowhere near as well as us. This ability developed as we used tools for the hunt, with simple, fit-in-the-palm-of-your-hand stones as the first weapons. Even earlier though, Homo Erectus was the first able to take advantage of a distinct physiological edge that has persisted to our modern day. We can run. Not necessarily very fast, but certainly very far. Homo Erectus’ upright posture (erect, hence Erectus), combined with a powerful and supporting leg muscle structure, allowed him to go farther than any hominid had ever gone before, faster than any other specie could. And go farther they did. Agents of the first human diaspora, Homo Erectus brought mankind out of Africa and into both Europe and Asia, setting a greater stage for the future of man. Anthropologists speculate that the main reason for the spread was due to changes in the food supply. As far as traversing long distances to find food, humans are not unique. Animals time their migrations to yearly seasonal shifts that affect the food supply. For man, however, the move was not the result of a cyclical process. Larger scale climatic change forced human beings to spread on outward. Living from 1.8 million years ago to 500, 000 years ago, members of the Homo Erectus specie became the original pioneers of a genus of pioneers.
References / Further Reading:
The Teaching Company’s Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations, narrated by Brian M. Fagan
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