
Age of Last Known Settlement of Homo Erectus - conse_lad
https://now.uiowa.edu/2019/12/researchers-determine-age-last-known-settlement-direct-ancestor-modern-humans
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mkl
Recent discussion of a different article about the same thing:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21834113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21834113)

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codeflo
"Homo erectus, one of modern humans’ direct ancestors, was a wandering bunch.
[...] But about 400,000 years ago, Homo erectus essentially vanished."

So are they our direct ancestors, or have they vanished? Both can't be true.

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jbotz
Why not? They "vanished" around the time that we "appeared", so there is no
contradiction.

Most recent evidence puts the earliest appearance of Homo Sapience between
300-500 Kya, perhaps even a bit more than 500 Kya. In practice with evolution
there is often an overlap of ancestral and descendant species, especially in
isolated environments, and thus the discovery that there probably were Homo
Erectus on Java until 100 Kya thus also fits with this.

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codeflo
Do "vanish" and "appear" have another meaning that I'm not aware of? To me,
they imply two discontinuities. But if they are our direct ancestors, they
simply gradually became us. Or rather, we still _are_ them.

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vfc1
Only 130k? That is very recent, overlapping with modern humans, although they
might not have been out of Africa yet.

