Prehistory
Homo erectus: The First Human Species to Leave Africa
Homo erectus became the first hominin known to spread widely across Africa and Asia and survived for more than 1.5 million years before its extinction.
Era · Before c. 3000 BC
Prehistory
From the formation of Earth and the age of dinosaurs to the first cave art and monuments, before writing was invented.
Prehistory
Dmanisi Hominins: Earliest Humans Outside Africa in Georgia
Five skulls and other remains showed that small-brained early Homo had left Africa by about 1.8 million years ago, before the invention of the hand axe.
Prehistory
Acheulean Hand Axes: The Longest-Used Tool in Human History
The Acheulean hand axe became the most long-lived tool design in human history, made by several human species over more than 1.5 million years before giving way to Middle Stone Age and Middle Palaeolithic technologies.
Prehistory
Paranthropus boisei: Mary Leakey's 'Nutcracker Man' Skull
The OH 5 skull revealed a robust, big-toothed hominin and, through one of the first potassium-argon dates, showed that human evolution in Africa was far older than thought.
Prehistory
Turkana Boy: The Most Complete Homo erectus Skeleton Ever Found
The Nariokotome skeleton (KNM-WT 15000) gave the first detailed view of the body of Homo erectus, showing tall, long-legged, human-like proportions.
Prehistory
Diprotodon: Australia's Giant Marsupial and Its Extinction
Diprotodon died out roughly 45,000 to 40,000 years ago, part of a wave of Australian megafauna extinctions after humans arrived.
Prehistory
Control of Fire by Early Humans: From Wonderwerk to the Hearth
Hominins used fire at least occasionally by about 1 million years ago, and regular use of hearths became widespread after about 400,000 years ago.
Prehistory
Homo antecessor: The Gran Dolina Fossils of Atapuerca, Spain
Fossils from level TD6 of Gran Dolina were named Homo antecessor in 1997, showing that humans lived in western Europe more than 780,000 years ago.
Prehistory
Peking Man: The Zhoukoudian Fossils and Their Wartime Loss
Zhoukoudian yielded remains of about 40 Homo erectus individuals, but almost all the original fossils disappeared in December 1941 and have never been found.
Prehistory
Java Man: Eugène Dubois and the Trinil Homo erectus Fossils
Dubois named Pithecanthropus erectus in 1894; after decades of controversy the fossils were recognised as the first known specimens of Homo erectus.
Prehistory
Homo heidelbergensis: The Mauer Jaw and Europe's Early Humans
The Mauer mandible became the type specimen of Homo heidelbergensis, a species often seen as a possible common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans.
Prehistory
Sima de los Huesos: The Pit of Bones at Atapuerca, Spain
The site produced the largest collection of Middle Pleistocene human fossils in the world and DNA showing these people were early relatives of the Neanderthals.