Homo heidelbergensis is an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human which existed during the Middle Pleistocene. It was subsumed as a subspecies of H. erectus in 1950 as H. e. heidelbergensis, but towards the end of the century, it was more widely classified as its own species. It is debated whether or not to constrain H. heidelbergensis to only Europe or to also include African and Asian specimens, and this is further confounded by the type specimen being a jawbone, because jawbones feature few diagnostic traits and are generally missing among Middle Pleistocene specimens. Thus, it is debated if some of these specimens could be split off into their own species or a subspecies of H. erectus. Because the classification is so disputed, the Middle Pleistocene is often called the "muddle in the middle."
Homo is the genus that emerged in the genus Australopithecus that encompasses the extant species Homo sapiens, plus several extinct species classified as either ancestral to or closely related to modern humans, most notably Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis. The genus emerged with the appearance of Homo habilis just over 2 million years ago. Homo, together with the genus Paranthropus, is probably sister to Australopithecus africanus, which itself had previously split from the lineage of Pan, the chimpanzees.
The District of Santarém is a district of Portugal, located in Portugal's Centro Region. The district capital is the city of Santarém.
Homo rhodesiensis is the species name proposed by Arthur Smith Woodward (1921) to classify Kabwe 1, a Middle Stone Age fossil recovered from a cave at Broken Hill, or Kabwe, Northern Rhodesia .. In 2020, the skull was dated to 324,000 to 274,000 years ago. Other similar older specimens also exist.
The Atapuerca Mountains is a karstic hill formation near the village of Atapuerca in the province of Burgos, northern Spain.
Aris Poulianos is a Greek anthropologist and archaeologist.
The Steinheim skull is a fossilized skull of a Homo neanderthalensis or Homo heidelbergensis found on 24 July 1933 near Steinheim an der Murr, Germany. It is estimated to be between 250,000 and 350,000 years old. The skull is slightly flattened and has a cranial capacity between 950 and 1280 cc. Sometimes referred to as Homo steinheimensis in older literature, the original fossil is housed in the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany. Some believe that the Steinheim skull may have belonged to an adult female due to its gracile nature.
A number of varieties of Homo are grouped into the broad category of archaic humans in the period that precedes and is contemporary to the emergence of the earliest early modern humans around 300 ka. Omo-Kibish I from southern Ethiopia and the remains from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco and Florisbad in South Africa are among the earliest remains of Homo sapiens. The term typically includes Homo neanderthalensis, Denisovans, Homo rhodesiensis (300–125 ka), Homo heidelbergensis (600–200 ka), Homo naledi, Homo ergaster, and Homo antecessor.
Dali man is the remains of a late Homo erectus or archaic Homo sapiens who lived in the late-mid Pleistocene epoch. The remains comprise a complete fossilized skull, which was discovered by Liu Shuntang in 1978 in Dali County, Shaanxi Province, China.
Paleolithic Europe, the Lower or Old Stone Age in Europe, encompasses the era from the arrival of the first archaic humans, about 1.4 million years ago until the beginning of the Mesolithic around 10,000 years ago. This period thus covers over 99% of the total human presence on the European continent. The early arrival and disappearance of Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis, the appearance, complete evolution and eventual demise of Homo neanderthalensis and the immigration and successful settlement of Homo sapiens all have taken place during the European Paleolithic.
Nanjing Man is a subspecies of Homo erectus found in China. Large fragments of one male and one female skull and a molar tooth of H. e. nankinensis were discovered in 1993 in the Hulu cave on the Tangshan (汤山) hills near Nanjing. The term Nanjing man is used to describe the subspecies of Homo erectus but is also used when referring to the three fossils. The specimens were found in the Hulu limestone cave at a depth of 60–97 cm by Liu Luhong, a local worker. Dating the fossils yielded an estimated age of 580,000 to 620,000 years old.
Tautavel Man refers to the archaic humans which—from approximately 550,000 to 400,000 years ago—inhabited the Caune de l’Arago, a limestone cave in Tautavel, France. They are generally grouped as part of a long and highly variable lineage of transitional morphs which inhabited the Middle Pleistocene of Europe, and would eventually evolve into the Neanderthals. They have been variably assigned to either H. (s.?) heidelbergensis, or as a European subspecies of H. erectus as H. e. tautavelensis. The skull is reconstructed based on the specimens Arago 21 and 47, and it is, to a degree, more characteristic of what might be considered a typical H. erectus morphology than a typical H. heidelbergensis morphology. The brain capacity is 1,166 cc. They seem to have had an overall robust skeleton. Average height may have been 166 cm.
The Petralona cave also Cave of the Red Stones, a karst formation, is located at 300 m (984 ft) above sea-level on the western foot of Mount Katsika, about 1 km (0.62 mi) east of the village of Petralona, about 35 km (22 mi) south-east of Thessaloniki city on the Chalkidiki peninsula, Greece. The site came to public attention when in 1960 a fossilized archaic human skull was found. The cave had been discovered accidentally only a year earlier (1959) after erosion had left clefts in the rock. "Bejeweled" with impressive stalactite and stalagmite formations and holding an abundance of fossils, the cave soon attracted geologists and paleontologists. After decades of excavations the cave is open to the public and scientific work is documented and presented in an adjacent archaeological museum.
The Ndutu skull is the partial cranium of a hominin that has been assigned variously to late Homo erectusHomo rhodesiensis, and early Homo sapiens, from the Middle Pleistocene, found at Lake Ndutu in northern Tanzania.
The Cave of Aroeira is an archaeological and paleoanthropological site in the Portuguese Estremadura Limestone Massif. The cave is located in the village of Almonda, in the civil parish of Zibreira, in the municipality of Torres Novas in the district of Santarém. The cave contained stones from the Paleolithic Acheulean culture, and the skull of Homo heidelbergensis, circa 400,000 years old. The discovery of Aroeira 3 was announced in spring 2017 - the earliest human trace in Portugal.
Almonda is a Portuguese village of around 300 inhabitants in the civil parish of Zibreira, within the municipality of Torres Novas and the Santarém District.
Zibreira is a civil parish in Portugal, located within the municipality of Torres Novas, in the Santarém District. It is noted for the Aroeria cave, where the Aroeira 3 skull of a 400,000 year old Homo Heidelbergensis was found, being the oldest trace of human history in Portugal.
Kabwe 1 is a Middle Paleolithic fossil assigned by Arthur Smith Woodward in 1921 as the type specimen for Homo rhodesiensis, now mostly considered a synonym of Homo heidelbergensis.
The archaeological site of Atapuerca is located in the province of Burgos in the north of Spain and is notable for its evidence of early human occupation. It was designated a World Heritage Site in 2000.
Homo bodoensis is the species name for extinct archaic humans that lived during the Chibanian in Africa. It relies on the fossil specimen known as Bodo cranium, which was discovered in 1976 from the Awash River in Ethiopia and is estimated to have lived around 500,000 years ago. Following the comparative analysis of the fossil with those of other Homo falling on the same geological age, the name was formally introduced in 2021.
