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The Earliest African Emigrants• Why they left is a mystery• A greater range of physical variation in
specimens outside of Africa at about 1.8 mya• Into Java, Indonesia by 1.6 mya• Equates to less than 200,000 years to travel from
East Africa to Southeast Asia
The Dmanisi Hominins• The discovery of the Dmanisi materials in the Republic of Georgia began in
the early 1990s.• The most informative specimens are four well-preserved crania, with one
recently discovered being almost complete.• The remains are the best-preserved hominins of this age found anywhere
outside of Africa.
The Dmanisi Hominins
• The most complete specimen has a less robust and thinner browridge, a projecting lower face, and a large upper canine.
• All three Dmanisi crania have small cranial capacities.
• A number of stone tools, similar to Olduwan industry from Africa, have been recovered at Dmanisi.
• Remains from four individuals allows comparisons with H. erectus from other areas
Dmanisi Diagnostic Characteristics• Estimated height ranging from ca 4 feet 9 inches
to 5 feet 5 inches, smaller than full H. erectus specimens from East Africa or Asia
• Body proportions, however, similar to H. erectus (and H. sapiens) and different from earlier hominins
1. First hominins to leave Africa were small-bodied early form of H. erectus, with smaller brains than later forms and carrying a typical African Oldowan stone tool culture
2. These hominins had none of the adaptations hypothesized to be essential to hominin migration: tall and relative large brains
3. Perhaps two migrations out of Africa at the time: small-brained, short-statured Dmanisi hominins and large, robust body build of H. erectus populations of Java and China
Possibilities Raised by the Dmansi Discoveries
Homo Erectus from Indonesia• Six sites in eastern
Java, dating from 1.6 mya to 1 mya, during the Early to Middle Pleistocene.
• The Ngandong individuals date from 27,000 ya.– Homo erectus
Soloiensus (“Solo man”) formerly classified as Homo Sapiens
Homo erectus from China• 40 male and female
adults and children near Beijing, at Zhoukoudian, excavated beginning in 1920’s.
• 14 skullcaps, other cranial pieces, more than 100 isolated teeth, and scattering of postcranial remains
• Formerly called “Peking Man” or Homo erectus Pekinensis
European specimens
• Atapuerca region in northern Spain, 1.2 mya– partial jaw with few
teeth;closely resembles Dmanisi fossils; simple flake tools and animal bones
• Gran Dolina, dated to appx 850,000-780,000 ya
• Assigning the fossils to a particular species is problematic, based on the fragmentary nature of the remains
• Spanish paleoanthropologists place these hominins into a species called Homo antecessor