Whatever Happened to Homo erectus? - Science Talk

Who’s your (ancient) daddy? Did he walk upright? Could he control fire? Did he have a brow ridge that wouldn’t quit?! Then maybe he was a Homo of the erectus — not so sapient — type. Many new Homo erectus specimens have been added to the global repository in the past decades, and many new interpretations have followed. It is more that most can easily digest. Come join professor Henry Gilbert, discoverer of the Daka Homo erectus cranium, to have the Pleistocene evidence of your ancestors’ evolutionary history explained.

WHO: Henry Gilbert, Assoc. Professor of Anthropology, CSU East Bay, and Researcher, Human Evolution Research Center, UC Berkeley

[MinTubaTuba]

What a remarkably gifted and well-intentioned teacher.

[gvbvbnbnbnnnbvb]

Very interesting !
Maybe an update 5 years later would be welcome ?

[TragoudistrosMPH]

Really good talk! I like his use of scientific reasoning and usage of data.
I find homo erectus more fascinating than Neanderthals because they traveled so much of the world. It's strange that a world wide species could have died out, everywhere. What did happen to them?

[mindalacy]

Multiple species living at the same time, even closely related ones, should be something important to consider rather than assuming that variation in one species accounts for all the differences in related looking fossils founds. This competition for resources between closely related species is what creates the selective pressure for advantages like the encephalization, frontal lobe abstraction and language skill; the ones that drove our species separation. Without the competition, which could just be environmental changes that create more stress on some but less on the advantaged, not necessarily direct competition or something as dramatic as warfare, there would be little else to drive the changes.

[abicaksiz]

Very informative, very entertaining, excellent presentation... I like the way he summarizes the major trends in paleo-antropology critically.
A small contribution: At 44.15 appears "Kocabash" fossil from Turkey. He almost had the correct pronounciation except that "c" in Turkish gives the sound "j" as in English words (i.e. joy, Joshua, justice etc). The pronounciation should be koja-bash, which means "koja"=big, large, and "bash"=head in Turkish. Many thanks...

[john-paulderosa]

This was a great talk. I have always found this subject to be very difficult to grasp due to the huge number of sites and finds and putting them into some order seems to require a very fine mind, which this lecturer obviously has.

[wendydomino]

I feel like we need more fossils between habilis and erectus. There seems to be this very big leap between the ape-like habilis and rudolfensis type hominids that are not that far removed from Australopithecines to the very human-like erectus. Seems like there's got to be more in-between that.

[dwightehowell]

Great talk. problems: The very earliest tool makers there were moving good rock at least 10 miles when the local rock was crap so five miles isn't likely to be the limit for He. The trouble with bifaced/acheulean tools is that many of them have deliberately dulled edges which knappers do to be able to control fracture better. The conclusion by one knipper is that most bifaces was pretty much being used as a core from which the maximum amount of sharp chips were removed. At Boxgroove England they thought hand axes were being made by design but they were also commonly being broken up to get more edge.  Edges were studies on very early stone tools show they were used to cut plants such as tubers, wood, and process animals. He, Homo erectus, surely did at least that much. Did buy the book from Amazon but got the second handed one to save a lot of money.

[roberthofmann]

Probably the best talk I've seen on the topic.

[KipIngram]

This is a GREAT presentation. I've been watching a *lot* of videos recently on the recent discoveries made using deep genetic analysis, but this talk was given in 2014, and that stuff just really wasn't quite on the table yet. Given that fact, I think this is a remarkably cogent and sensible presentation of the what was then the "state of the art." Just bear in mind, if you've watched it, that an awful lot of undeniable genetic evidence has been added to our platter in the seven years since this hit the net.

[jmosur]

Great talk. Bummer about the mic cutting out. A wired mic is always better then a wireless one.

[BaronVonQuiply]

I think Al Bundy did rather well on this talk.

I'd watch it again.

[lindakautzman]

EXCELLENT PRESENTATION...LOVED THE PACE AND THE FRANK AND CLEAR LANGUAGE...REAL EASY TO LISTEN TO AND UNDERSTAND FOR SOMEONE LIKE MYSELF WHO IS JUST LEARNING ABOUT EVOLTION AND NO SCIENCE BACKGROUND...THANK YOU!

[twistedtrail]

love it when i learn somthing new from talks like this. ive never heard of squatting facets before

[forestdweller]

Wow, Gilbert covers so much in this excellent presentation. Thanks for the video share too.

[petermiesler]

25:00 Map v Territory problem. (a key point to remember and take into consideration - Environment Forms The Organism) 
(I hear that currently raccoons are speciating between city savvy and traditional country raccoon.)
Good talk.

[marcverhaegen]

This the old interpretation of how Homo erectus lived (running-hunting etc.), the information is excellent, but the interpretation is unfortunately biologically outdated.
For an update, based on comparative biology, google e.g. "Coastal Dispersal of Pleistocene Homo 2018 biology vs anthropocentrism".

[ploepiescoop]

But why did the homo erectus(and his underspecies) not survive after 50 thousand years ago since it wasn’t the Toba Eruption(75 thousand years ago) and they could not have interbred like the neanderthalensis because they were just to different? They survived about 2 million years, survived a massive vulcano eruption and then suddenly... extinct, were it the sapiens who killed them? Or what was it? I know we will never know it for sure but what do you think?

[bethbartlett]

It is truly odd how *Science allows itself to "Marry a THEORY and go full speed trying to prove the THEORY all while teaching the THEORY as if it were Fact, and CLOSING IT'S COLLECTIVE MIND to any other viable possibilities, in spite of finds, data, artifacts, and fossils.*

"Keep trying to put Cinderella's Shoe on Drucella's Foot"

[GoitomWTekle]

That is really great talk Dr Gilbert. Nice! I like it.