Recently, we reported on one of those Darwinian morality tales, according to which homo erectus died out because he was lazy, compared to the rest of us. Ann Gauger, pointed out that the broader picture (timelines, for example) does not suggest that Homo erectus was lazy. And now we learn, “The inference that laziness typifies […]
Tag: homo erectus
Ann Gauger: Was Homo erectus really that lazy?
Ann Gauger, a senior scientist at the Biologic Institute, writes to defend homo erectus from charges that laziness led to his his extinction. She writes, This anthropologist is not looking at the broader picture. H erectus is estimated to have appeared somewhere in Africa 1.9 mya. By 1.8 mya H erectus is found in Dmanisi, […]
Researchers: Homo erectus died out because he was lazy and very conservative
We don’t hear as much old-fashioned moralizing these days as we used to but this looks like the authentic product from ScienceDaily: Laziness helped lead to extinction of Homo erectus An archaeological excavation of ancient human populations in the Arabian Peninsula during the Early Stone Age, found that Homo erectus used ‘least-effort strategies’ for tool […]