12 questions · Science
When Jonathan Leakey, son of Louis and Mary Leakey, unearthed jaw fragments and hand bones of a two-million-year-old creature in Olduvai Gorge in 1960, the researchers faced a consequential decision: was this still an Australopithecus or already a human? In 1964 Louis Leakey, Phillip Tobias and John Napier chose human and named it Homo habilis, the "handy man", because primitive stone tools lay in the same layers. The name was a programme and a bet still argued over today. Habilis had a brain of some 600 cubic centimetres, larger than the australopithecines but far smaller than ours; its face still projected, its body was small, its arms long. Some specialists therefore see a late Australopithecus wearing the wrong label, others the first true member of our genus. What is certain: in its time, roughly 2.3 to 1.5 million years ago in East Africa, the first lasting tool tradition appeared; the Oldowan, cobblestones from which sharp flakes were struck with well-aimed blows. With these, carcasses could be butchered and bones cracked for the fatty marrow no other scavenger could reach. Whether habilis was the inventor is open, since the oldest known tools are over three million years old: older than the genus Homo itself. And one more thing is clear: it was no sole ruler of Africa. Paranthropus and early Homo erectus lived at the same time in the same landscape.
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Foto: José-Manuel Benito Álvarez (España): > Locutus Borg · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Handy man
Named for the stone tools found with it: "the skilful human", as the German-speaking colleagues put it.
Louis and Mary Leakey
The species was described in 1964 by Louis Leakey with Phillip Tobias and John Napier; the type fossil had been found in 1960 by their son Jonathan. The Leakeys shaped East African palaeoanthropology for decades; their son Richard and his wife Meave carried the work on.
In Olduvai Gorge
A 50-kilometre cut at the edge of the Serengeti exposing almost two million years of Earth history: the eastern "cradle of humankind".
About 2.3 to 1.5 million years ago
It therefore overlapped in time with Homo erectus and Paranthropus; the idea of an orderly succession is wrong.
Around 600 cubic centimetres
Well above Lucy's 400 to 500, but under half our volume. That increase was the reason for placing it in the genus Homo at all.
Foto: BabelStone · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The Oldowan
Named after Olduvai: cobbles from which sharp flakes were struck. Simple: but that edge was sharper than any predator's tooth.
Butchering carcasses and cracking bones
Cut marks on fossil bones prove it. Fatty marrow was a niche no other scavenger could reach: rich food for a growing brain.
Whether it truly belongs to the genus Homo
Small body, long arms, projecting face: some see a late Australopithecus. The boundary between genera is a research decision, not a constant of nature.
Older
Finds from Lomekwi in Kenya are 3.3 million years old: hundreds of thousands of years older than the earliest Homo. Tool use is not what made us human.
Paranthropus and Homo erectus
Two million years ago East Africa was densely settled by different hominins with different diets and ways of life, side by side.
Homo rudolfensis
Bigger face, slightly bigger brain, named after Lake Rudolf (today Lake Turkana). Whether it is a separate species or just the larger males of habilis remains open.
A strong, well-opposable thumb
It allowed the precision grip: guiding stone against stone with control. Without it, the best idea for a tool would have been useless.
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