ANT203H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Semicircular Canals, Jinniushan, Acheulean
Document Summary
What feature/s of h. erectusallowed it to expand geographically and persist so long temporally: cultural complexity in homo erectus, material culture plays a big role. Expensive tissue hypothesis: brains and guts are expensive tissues, describes how an increase in brain and body size is related to higher energy requirements, and therefore a change in diet (meat-eating) and decrease in gut size is necessary. Meat-eating: hunting or scavenging: evidence for both in the fossil record, primary cut marks, secondary cut marks overlaying predator tooth marks. Important to note that homo erectus did not only eat meat. They probably gained most calories from gathering roots, tubers, fruits etc: the use of fire. Fire use in homo erectus: fire provides heat, light, warmth, protection, and for cooking. Were the hominins using fire h. erectus: wonderwerk cave, south africa, burnt bone and plant ashes associated with acheulean tools: 1 mya, more recent conclusive evidence: israel, 790 kya; zhoukoudian, china: 400 780 kya.
