EARLY HOMINIDS IN ASIA

See Physical Anthropology: The Core, Chapter 11, pages 260-268;

Physical Anthropology, 6^th edition, Chapter 17, pages 442-446.

Not too long ago physical anthropology textbooks would have presented a general picture of hominid evolution that went something like this:

The earliest hominids, the australopithecines, evolved in Africa sometime between four and five million years ago. One of the australopithecine species evolved into an early species of the genus Australopithecus sometime around 2.6 to 2.4 million years ago. The earliest members of the genus Australopithecus then evolved into Homo habilis and H. habilis evolved into Homo erectus around 1.8 million years ago. H. erectus moved out of Africa around 1 million years ago reaching Asia and ultimately Europe.

New information has changed this scenario. An increasing number of paleoanthropologists accept the idea that another species, named Homo ergaster, existed between H. habilis and H. erectus. Many early African fossils originally placed into H. erectus should now be classified into this new species.

Before 1994, the oldest H. erectus fossils from Asia were from Java and were dated to well under one million years. In 1994, the Java material was redated to between 1.8 and 1.6 million years old.¹ Suddenly, Asiatic H. erectus was about as old as African H. ergaster. These new dates lead to speculation that an earlier species of Homo, perhaps H. habilis, left Africa some two million years ago bound for Asia. In Asia H. habilis evolved into H. erectus.

The suggestion that Homo was in Asia 1.8 million years ago, or perhaps even earlier, has recently been strengthened. In November 1995 two reports appeared on finds made at Longgupo Cave in south central Asia.² These new finds were dated by magnetic and electron spin resonance dating to approximately 1.9 million years ago. Among the finds are a partial jaw, isolated teeth, and what appears to be crude stone tools.

The jaw is thought to be a pre-H. erectus hominid with physical affinities to H. habilis and H. ergaster from Africa. However, it also shows similarities to the H. erectus finds from Java. Its precise classification must await further analysis.

Although there will be many interpretations of this data as it applies to the overall picture of hominid evolution, one possible scenario has been suggested by Bernard Wood and Alan Turner.³ They speculate that an early species of Homo left Africa about 2 million years ago and entered Asia. In Asia it evolved into H. erectus. The African H. erectus finds may have been the result of a migration of an Asiatic H. erectus population moving back into Africa.

If this interpretation is correct, the traditional view that the australopithecines evolved into early species of Australopithecus and ultimately H. erectus in Africa may only be partially true. There may have been a back-and-forth series of migrations of the genus Australopithecus between Africa and Asia.

1 E. Culotta, "Asian Hominids Grow Older," Science, 270 (November 17, 1995), 1116-1117.

2 B. Wood and A. Turner, "Out of Africa and into Asia," Nature, 378 (November 16, 1995), 239-240; H. Wanpo, et al., "Early Homo and Associated Artefacts from Asia," Nature, 378 (November 16, 1995), 275-278.

3 B. Wood and A. Turner, op cit.