Plenty of fruits and vegetables during the Ice Age? Doubtful. Wars against children and adolescents, the victors feasting upon the conquered? Well, maybe. Times have changed. In Texas, we’re not even allowed to hit them with a 2X4 anymore.

The earliest hominid species to leave Africa was Homo erectus, or Homo ergaster, who first left Africa about 1.8 million years ago. The transition from Homo erectus to Homo heidelbergensis (who was the last common ancestor of both modern man and Neanderthals) happened about 500,000 years ago in Europe, and probably 600,000 years ago in Africa (to Homo rhodesiensis, the African equivalent of Homo heidelbergensis).

These fossils from Spain are about 800,000 years old. The precise species they belonged to is a matter of dispute. The commonly accepted model for human evolution would place them as some kind of Homo erectus, since the transition to Homo heidelbergensis didn’t happen until 600,000 years ago, that is, 200,000 years after these fossils.

However, their somewhat modern features (more modern than Homo erectus) are the reason why some anthropologists place them in a different category – Homo antecessor, an intermediate form between Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis. These names are mostly just convenience; the species likely acquired more modern characteristics gradually, and when we look at snapshots in time such as fossils, we don’t see the full sequence of transition, just intermediary stages. Whether they can or should be given separate species designations is a matter of debate.

Please, read something newer than the 70’s, humans split from chimps more than 2 million years ago, everything from then until now is our ancestry, whatever shape they may have been in. Furthermore, pre-Clovis settlement theories in America are becoming more widely accepted, putting humans in America, much less Spain (just North of Africa, remember?) at more than 50,000 years ago.

Thanks for your comments.

The statement that some of the remains are 800,000 years old is not, in fact, a typo. Indeed, there is plenty of scientific evidence that indicates humans date back farther than that.

For example, researchers found that the first humans reached Europe more than a million years ago: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080326-first-european.html.