Similarities And Differences Of Homo Erectus And Homo Sapiens

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Bea Catapang
Brandon Rose
Physical Anthropology (OCC)
15 May 2014
Similarities and Differences of Homo Erectus and Homo Sapiens
"In our view, there are two alternatives. We should either admit that the Homo erectus/Homo sapiens boundary is arbitrary and use nonmorphological (i.e. temporal) criteria for determining it, or Homo erectus should be sunk [into H. sapiens]."
- Milford Wolpoff

INTRODUCTION
There are three hominids. The first one is Homo Habilis who was the most ape-like among them. Homo erectus was their later successor. They were just the ones who made the first stone tools. There are many similaritiesand difference between these two species. Sometimes, people call Homo sapiens “advanced Homo erectus”. The most important adaptive shift Homo erectus made was the first migration out of Africa. [The emigration meant moving across a variety of ecosystem, climates, and ecological settings. Each of this would have presented Homo erectus challenges never encountered by hominin. Most important was the move from tropical and subtropical Africa into the more seasonally cold regions of the Northern Hemisphere in Eurasia and the Far East.(anthropology book)] Some changes were resulted from this move and this is when I compare and differentiate the two after that move. Some people might say Homo sapiens and Homo erectus are just one, but there are many differences between these two as well.

KNOWING HOMO ERECTUS
Homo erectus was the second hominid species. They are called erectus because they were the first to stand upright posture from all. In my research, there are fossil evidences showing that they have lived until 1.3 million years from today and the earliest Homo erectus fossil dates back to 1.8 million years. Given this d...

... middle of paper ...

...hat we are doing right now. They started making the tool and they are the one who created the first fire. It was just passed on to a greater species that were gifted with more cranial capacity. Homo sapiens was the successor of these discoveries. They were the one who made these tools more advanced for them. This is the reason why these tools were different. Homo erectus was the inventor of all these things. Homo sapiens was the one who expanded the function to a better hunting. Homo sapiens was considered human more than human-like. I personally think that they are our ancestors mostly. They really look like us, only with few differences from us but they were no longer ape-like. The comparison of these two just shows us how they evolve from one human-like species to a human.

Work cited
Bones of contention
Biological anth p 374

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