Question

List the period , brain capacity and probable food of the Homo erectus stage of human evolution.

Answer 1

Hint: Homo erectus is an extinct Pleistocene archaic human species that first appeared around 2 million years ago. Its fossils are among the genus Homo's earliest recognisable members.

Complete answer:
A new set of fossils started to appear in the human fossil record about two million years ago. They are known as Homo erectus because they have grown in both body size and brain size.

The Asian H. erectus has a 1,000 cc average brain capacity (61 cu in). Overall, the brain size of H. erectus ranges from 546 to 1,251 cc (33.3–76.3 cu in), which is larger than that of modern humans and chimps but smaller than that of gorillas.

H. erectus, like modern humans, ranged in size from 146–185 cm (4 ft 9 in–6 ft 1 in) in height and 40–68 kg (88–150 lb) in weight, owing to regional variations in environment, mortality rates, and diet. Unlike other great apes, there does not seem to have been a large size difference between male and female H. erectus (size-specific sexual dimorphism).

Two adults from Koobi Fora had brain sizes of 848 and 804 cc (51.7 and 49.1 cu in), respectively, and another adult had a brain size of 691 cc (42.2 cu in), which may suggest sexual dimorphism, while sex was unknown. It's likely that H. erectus was the first in the human line to show sexual dimorphism, despite the fragmentary fossil record for erectus.

A meatier diet and, as a result, a higher calorie intake are often linked to increased brain size. However, since the large ape gut is used to synthesise fat by fermenting plant matter, which was substituted by dietary animal fat, it's conceivable that the energy-intensive guts shrank in size in H. erectus, allowing more energy to be redirected to brain development.

This would have implicitly increased brain size while retaining ancestor species' caloric requirements. As a response to the growing reliance on meat, H. erectus may have been the first to use a hunting and gathering food gathering technique. Hunting and gathering was a drastically different survival strategy, focusing on cooperation, division of labour, and food sharing.

Note: According to a study published in 2019, the last recorded occurrence of Homo erectus was 117,000–108,000 years ago in Ngandong, Java. Researchers estimated in 2020 that just before extinction, Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis lost more than half of their climate niche – the climate to which they were adapted – space, with no corresponding reduction in physical range, and that climate change played a significant role in extinction of past homo species