“Basically, Homo erectus sits back there as the ancestor of all these later hominins.”
The new dates from Ngandong, Java, place the species’ end days in context. “When Homo erectus was living at Ngandong, Homo sapiens had already evolved in Africa, Neanderthals were evolving in Europe, and Homo heidelbergensis was evolving in Africa,” said co-author Russell Ciochon, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Iowa. “Basically, Homo erectus sits back there as the ancestor of all these later hominins.”