The life of humankind 2 millions years ago
Our species modestly called Sapiens (from latin: “the one who knows“), is part of the Human genus.
What was Human genus life like at the cradle of its history?
The first Homo.
In the last thousands of years Homo Sapiens (our species) arroganly believed (and wanted to believe) it was extremely exclusive. Nowadays we know the Homo Sapiens is part of Homo genus and it is neither the only-existed nor the longest-lived species. It is not the first Homo appeared on earth!
Homo genus was born about 2.5 millions years ago in Africa with the so-called Homo habilis. Later on the longest-lived Homo was born in the same continent: the Homo Erectus. It lived about 2 millions years, it is the first intercontinental Homo (he reached Asia) and the one who discovered the fire!
What was the Homo Erectus life like 2 millions years ago?
I took Homo Erectus just as an Example. At the beginning the life of the different species weren’t equal but similar.
Let’s imagine the daily life of the Homo Erectus at the cradle of his history!
At that time Homo Sapiens hadn’t been born and Homo Erectus hadn’t discovered the fire yet.
Homo Erectus was weak towards nature
It was physically weak! It wasn’t able to fight with a lion or a jackal, not even with a chimpanzee. Undoubtedly his more special aspect was his big brain. You might now think that was a pro. It wasn’t!
The brain is a problem if you don’t take advantage from it!
The brain was about the 2% of the body but required about the 25% of the total energy. Nowadays is quite the same, the percentages are a little higher. Nevertheless the brain wasn’t helping to distinguish humans from the other animals. It wasn’t producing much more than a flint knight and bone tips! It apparently only had disadvantages. Two in particular:
- Homo Erectus was spending more time looking for food -> Homo Erectus was weak and the brain required much energy.
- The muscles atrophied ->Homo Erectus became even weaker (it sounds like a freak of nature, doesn’t it?).
Then, why the brain and the neural systems continued to grow over the years?
More important than the brain size are the numbers of neural links. Why did they grow continuously? We don’t know!
It isn’t clear why the evolution pushed for the growth of the brain (size and neural links) while the Homo was struggling to survive. Moreover the brain growing was becoming heavier challenging the skeleton of the new upright posture.
So, what was the Homo Erectus daily life like?
Now you understood the background, let’s go to the point. His life was quite short. It was something like 25 years long on average, if they got over childhood. Child mortality was extremely high.
Daily he was living in fear of predators, together with others in small groups. A female couldn’t grow a baby without help. He tended to hide and most of time he survived collecting plants, fruits and insects. Rarely he hunted big animals with the help of others. Homo Erectus was in the middle of the food chain!
One of Homo Erectus most common activities
Let’s imagine you are one of that men. You are hiding and you see a bunch of lions hunting a giraffe. You wait for them to devour it. Now you might think is your turn. «Now i come out and I go to eat the remains» you might think. You would be wrong! You still have to wait for the jackals to satiate with the remains. Now imagine what could be remained of that giraffe. Nothing, or almost. I’ll help you: it remained just the bones!
Now is your turns. What the prehistoric man tended to do at this point is to split bones with a stone tool, and to collect the bone marrow. It was our speciality!
Conclusion
For long years different genera of Homo lived in a similar way. They were different. Some of them were physically stronger than others, some of them had bigger brain, some of them were particularly low. One thing was surely similar: they had many things to fear! A lot changed with the discovery of fire by Homo Erectus (I will write something about it, stay tuned!) and with the cognitive revolution (what is that? I will write something about it soon). There are many mysteries and many interesting things to tell about the humankind history, I hope you enjoyed this topic.
Bibliography
This article has been possible thanks to the book: “From Animals into Gods. A Brief History of Humankind.“ by Yuval Noah Harari.
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