ARCH 131 Lecture : 11_1 Archaic Homo in Europe_lecture script.pdf

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Archaeology
• Course: ARCH 131
• Professor: Dennis Sandgathe

Document Summary

In this unit we are going to look at the earliest humans to make their way into europe. These include a wide range of fossils that have, over the years, been variously classified as homo erectus, homo heidelbergensis, homo steinheimensis, and several other, now basically defunct, species classifications. Because of this range of variability and variety of classifications, for simplicity sake, researchers use the catch-all term archaic homo to refer to all these fossils as a group. Some researchers also include neandertals in the category. Archaic homo, but we will be dealing with them on their own in the next unit. Before we move onto these early european homins, let"s do a quick review: We have the emergence of our own genus, homo, in africa about 2. 5 million years ago currently represented by homo habilis and homo rudolfensis. Then we have the appearance of homo ergaster, the african version of homo erectus, around, or just after, 2 million years ago.