1994/02/25 by C.C. Swisher, Garniss H. Curtis, T. Jacob T. Jacob +3 · 574 citations
Social Sciences · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #Paleopathology and ancient diseases #Homo erectus #Acheulean #Hominidae #Early Pleistocene #Paleontology #Geography #Archaeology #Geology #Biology #Biological evolution #Pleistocene
paper · doi:10.1126/science.8108729
published in Science 263(5150), 1118-1121 (American Association for the Advancement of Science)
openalex publication_date 1994/02/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
40Ar/39Ar laser-incremental heating of hornblende separated from pumice recovered at two hominid sites in Java, Indonesia, has yielded well-defined plateaus with weighted mean ages of 1.81 +/- 0.04 and 1.66 +/- 0.04 million years ago (Ma). The hominid fossils, a juvenile calvaria of Pithecanthropus and a partial face and cranial fragments of Meganthropus, commonly considered part of the Asian Homo erectus hypodigm, are at least 0.6 million years older than fossils referred to as Homo erectus (OH-9) from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, and comparable in age with the oldest Koobi Fora Homo cf. erectus (Homo ergaster) in Kenya. These ages lend further credence to the view that Homo erectus may have evolved outside of Africa. If the ancestor of Homo erectus ventured out of Africa before 1.8 Ma, the dispersal would have predated the advent of the Acheulean culture at 1.4 Ma, possibly explaining the absence of these characteristic stone cleavers and hand axes in East Asia.