Dating of bones from Indonesia confirm Homo erectus roamed planet for 1.8M years

[mikorym]

I went to the Sterkfontein Caves [1] [2] recently and the most poignant thing for me was the diminutive size of Australopithecus. While larger huminoid species [3] were evolving, our direct (well, disregarding cross breeding) ancestors were tiny. Australopithecus is about the size of a 5 or 6 year old.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterkfontein

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_of_Humankind

[3] That would be the precursors to Neanderthals and Denisovians.

Edit: The males were somewhat larger. Modern humans do not display the same degree of sexual dimorphism as Australopithecus appears to have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus

[Pigo]

One thing I've always wondered about these early hominins is whether there was a large enough variety in any of them that we find different races within a species.

Maybe that is a dumb question, or just complex to answer. I've just always wondered because some homo sapiens look wildly different from each other. I know it's because we've spread out so much, and had a long time to do so. But I read things about the denisovans being here or there for a very long span of time. It's hard to imagine that they didn't at least have occasional mutations that lead to interesting features.

[seszett]

We have the same Australopithecus ancestors as Neanderthals and Denisovans though. The sapiens/neanderthal split is much more recent than that, "only" a few hundred thousand years, while Australopithecus became extinct two million years ago.

[Perenti]

I wouldn't be surprised if the red hairy people of Australian Aboriginal mythology turn out to be the last stand of Homo erectus, it's just that no fossils have been found yet.

[jacobush]

I always wonder about troll mythology and Neanderthals...

[abc_lisper]

Yep, Australian aboriginal mythologies turn out to surprisingly accurate. Lot of their stories have checked out by evidence.

[littledorky]

Make sense, Java was isolated dead end on the southeastern edge of the Eurasian landmass

[account73466]

Alternatively, they didn't come from Africa but from Asia.

[learnstats2]

I'm unclear that the verb 'died out' is helpful to understanding here.

'survived longest' makes more sense - the point is that Homo erectus died out everywhere else much earlier.

[personjerry]

That's why they moved to Scala instead

[gremlinsinc]

There's always that one guy... you're him aren't you?

[jmkni]

Or Kotlin Island - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotlin_Island

[shabeepk]

That would have been an even more dramatic place to die!

https://goo.gl/maps/U6rQAACYYmB7r1Bw9

[xallace]

stay away from Java

[dang]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20600357

[akskos]

Came for the Java jokes, was not disappointed

[alvatar]

I almost die in Java too.

[rifaqat]

eventually we all will die, hoping that Java will die.

[shabeepk]

It would have been better to die in Java 2.

[Pigo]

Wow, that is an annoying website to visit. I would rather have downloaded a text file than wade through all of that.

The first ad takes up half of my screen, and then I had to see a fullscreen amazon preview. When I tried to click the cookie policy it thought I clicked an ad that led to a pop-up.

[mothsonasloth]

Did they get garbage collected though?

[vectorEQ]

i think that is was scientists are doing now :D

[louis8799]

If they had not died, they would have told us to stay away from Java.