Talk:Homo habilis

[[Category: good articles|Homo habilis]]

Facts I Would Like to Know More About

I personally thought this was a good page. I would like to know more about homo habilis though! Such as, how did they become extinct? I'll probably add some info. About that once I find it on other sites ^.^ -Freddy

Fixed it up a bit! cool species, added pic too.--Quena@sympatico.ca 04:59, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

I deleted a short paragraph that had to do with more religious aspects in comparison with actual evidence of H. habilis backing up the species in general. --King of the Dancehall 20:33, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I would like to know more about this homo habilis you have said that they were found along east africa bt which country? to me i think tanzania is the main country through which oldvai gorge is the main place —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 196.44.170.61 (talk • contribs).

I want to know what shelters Homo Habilis used. I will not add it myself though, too lazy. May add what they specifically ate sometime soon, though.

Contradiction?

The section "Stratification and expansion" may be a bit fallacious, I don't think there is any fossil evidence of any Homo prior to H.erectus existing outside of Africa. The section lacks citations and until there is a valid reference disproving this complaint, such misleading information ought to be removed.

From the article: "Anthropologist Richard Leakey’s son Jonathon Leakey, unearthed an ape-like skull that shared human like traits in 1964", but Richard Leakey was born 1944, so his child could not had been more than 4-5 years old, and then Richard would have had to been a father in a quite young age. Does anyone have any more facts about this? /Nilzzon 16:13, 20 January 2006 (UTC

You're right. Richard Leakey was actually the brother of Jonathan Leakey. Louis Leakey was the father of both Richard and Jonathan Leakey. Details can be found in the Leakey foundation's website, which states, "In 1960, eldest son Jonathan Leakey found parts of a juvenile hominid skull, jaw, and hand bones." [1] --Angrylilgurl 05:07, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Would like to see more comparisons between habilis and others such as erectus or aferensis —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.21.156.31 (talk) 19:21, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

removed inappropriate/useless/unrelated insult comment 98.67.2.77 (talk) 20:13, 14 June 2010 (UTC)HammerFilmsFan

Australopithecus habilis?

I am not fully indating on the theories of the recent data that would include the H. habilis being reclassed as under the Australopithecus genus but i do know of the eviendce just not enough to write about it. could a section be added to express this new data by someone with more knowledge of the topic than i. of if there is alot to rename the topc to fit with it so. cj105 24 May 2006

I haven't heard any (recent) proposal to reassign habilis to Australopithecus. - UtherSRG (talk) 11:39, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Not very recent, but in 1999 Wood et al. proposed this reclassification. See "The Human Genus", Wood and Collard, Science 2 April 1999: 65, DOI: 10.1126/science.284.5411.65 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.178.237.94 (talk) 16:54, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

He proposed it, but this has been seen as invalid revisionism. The Austro's are clearly in a separate genus, and some paleontologists (the minority view at this time) see them closer to apes than man. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.67.2.77 (talk) 20:15, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Douglas Futuyma calls the specimen "australopithecus habilis" in his second edition of "Evolution"(part of the evolutionary biology curriculum in great parts of the U.S). Stinukli (talk) 21:17, 31 October 2011 (GMT +1)

The reasoning for A. habilis rather than Homo habilis is due to the disproportionatly longer arm length in habilis versus other homo species, small cranium volume, a skull still retaining archaic features (protruding face) and shorter stature suggesting a spacially restrictive environment. Australopithecus brain sizes ranged from ~300 - ~600 which is close to the range of "Homo" habilis of 363-600 yet the page uses the very upper limit of habilis to say it had a brain size roughly half the size of the human brain. The page should state that they had a brain size only marginally larger than their decendants. The head shape, size of the body and long arm length relative to body still display archaic features. It is my view that this page is rather pro Leakey as they had decided to lower the limits of what species could be considered in the Homo genus by the features mentioned above. 70.126.82.78 (talk) 02:38, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Correction: Homo habilis brain sizes were formerly thought to range between 363 and 600 cc, even as late as 2000 when the "Australopithecus habilis" paper now cited in this Article was published. Subsequent reassessments of H. habilis skull fragments have updated its brain size to range between 550 and 687 cc. Despite what was published as late as 2000, the lower limit of H. habilis brain size is much higher than the 363 cc you talked about here. Here's a link: http://tolweb.org/treehouses/?treehouse_id=3710. If that's not recent enough, I can always dig out my Evolution textbook. At any rate, the Article now uses an outdated source to take a revisionist position in its Lead contrary to scholarly consensus. I will be bold and correct this. Even this link, while it does indeed talk about ongoing controversy, makes it clear that the H. habilis brain averages more than 600 cc, the very measurement you insisted was the maximum of the range: http://australianmuseum.net.au/Homo-habilis. Exact quote: "Brain averaged 610 cubic centimetres in size, representing 1.7 per cent of their body weight. This was a significant increase compared to australopithecine brains" (Emphasis added).

610 cc > 600 cc. Again, 610 cc is now calculated to be the average brain size for Homo habilis, whereas you cited 600 cc as the maximum.

Homo habilis was a descendant of Australopithecus sediba and itself the common ancestor of the Genus Homo. Technically, the Genus Homo would become polyphyletic if it were to exclude its common ancestor, regardless of visible physical features. Moreover, the increase in brain size from A. sediba to H. habilis was appreciable and most likely explains why stone tool use began when it did. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 18:48, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

ER 1470

Is ER 1470 known by a different name? I was expecting to find it here with no luck. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.234.198.197 (talk • contribs) .

KNM ER 1470 is Homo rudolfensis. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:50, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Full Skeleton of a Homo habilis

Is a there a picture of a full Homo habilis skeleton, besides from the head. Anker99 19:18, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

No, so far only skulls (or parts of skulls) have been discovered. {The poster foremrly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.12.69.184 (talk) 19:10, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Java

-didn't homo habilis exist until 27,000 in Java? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 142.59.193.47 (talk • contribs).

No - habilis never lived outside of Africa, as far as the known fossil record analysis.

No. - UtherSRG (talk) 15:42, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

That was probably Homo erectus.Kfc1864 00:45, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Homo erecus lived in Java, and Neanderthals lived till 27,000 ya. Get your acts right.:)Kfc1864 talk _{my edits} 09:58, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Richard Leakey on Time.jpg

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Discovery of new Homo erectus and Homo habilis fossils at Lake Turkana

In case anyone should have time to annotate the article, the following are links to a Times article questioning that Homo habilis is the direct ancestor of Homo erectus as a result of recent finds at Lake Turkana, as well as to a news article and a letter in Nature:

[2] [3] [4].

I shall try and include some detail myself in due course, but that might be better done by someone with a scientific background who understands the debates. DSuser 13:45, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Reconstructions

we need authors. affilliations and nation of origins for reconstruction. this one is german apparently. and to looks very thin what i think is not warranted. a comprehensive reference in the field would also be helpfull, it is a very rich resource when the chemical and geophysical and anatomical aspects are weighed to the anthropological/medical knowledge they derive from. Plenty of the research is relevant for the reconstruction of habitats , diets and other aspects. I don't think there is better except research on site.24.132.170.252 (talk) 23:45, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

'Hobbits' Of Flores Island Descended From H. habilis?

This interesting article [5] 'The foot that may prove 'hobbits' existed', states that:

"The long toes of H. floresiensis suggest they could be the direct descendants of a hominin similar to an early human ancestor such as H. habilis, rather than the more recent H. erectus, a species known to have migrated out of African long before the migration of our own species, H. sapiens." --217.33.67.248 (talk) 12:38, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, that makes an assumption that the Flores Island species was a true species, and not some local morph of a known hominid. However, if habilis is the direct anscestor of erectus and the like, then, technically, yes - but habilis died out long, long before the Florestian creatures lived, and if they are a true taxon, then their ancestor was much more recent. 98.67.2.77 (talk) 20:21, 14 June 2010 (UTC)HammerFilmsFan

H.h. outside Africa? Really?

The article currently contains unsourced statements to the effect that H.h. ranged into Europe and Asia. This is to my knowledge completely unfounded, but I'm a late prehistoric archaeologist so I don't have any literature on the subject. Anybody else? Martin Rundkvist (talk) 20:46, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

The Azores is Africa, I can see how some might have ended up there — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.163.109.87 (talk) 00:32, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Wait, this would mean that they built boats or rafts to get there. Just how advanced are these hominins? A lot we probably don't know since the stuff didn't preserve.198.85.118.64 (talk) 17:33, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

They weren't that advanced. But even a chimp can grab a log in a hurricane by accident and wind up on an island. It only takes two... Drsruli (talk) 20:17, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Maybe in 2009 it was less founded. It seems more likely now:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1107724108

https://www.sapiens.org/biology/dispersal-hominin/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3127876/

https://australian.museum/learn/science/human-evolution/the-first-migrations-out-of-africa/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9btN6H7H3Rg

Also, a competing theory that the hobbits represent descendants of such an early migration.

Drsruli (talk) 20:09, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Expansion and Inclusion

I have begun an attempt to make the pages on Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo habilis, and Homo georgicus resemble each other in format and content more closely. I shall try to present each competing interpretation, but have often settled, half-way through the page, on presenting each species as legitimately distinct (while letting readers know, of course). My main concern is that these six pages present many prevalent and valid interpretations but no conformity of tone or content between pages (or sometimes even paragraphs). I shall also try to make conglomerate authorship less detectable between pages, personally editing large chunks using my own tone. I shall attempt, however, to let no personal interpretations of our ancestry interfere with the hypotheses presented. I will not eradicate any additions to these pages' content, obviously, but will attempt to make their voice and presentation uniform. Homo Ergaster (talk) 00:25, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Inconsistency?

This article suggests a connection between Homo Ergaster and Homo Erectus. But when you link to the Homo Ergaster page on Wikipedia, the information there suggests there may not be a direct link between Ergaster and Erectus. Can any changes be made to ensure these two closely related articles don't appear to contradict each other?

Solaricon (talk) 14:20, 2 May 2010 (UTC) yes we must avoid the appearance of contradictions/inconsistencies76.178.120.228 (talk) 09:30, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Olduvai Gorge

It says Homo habilis was discovered in Olduvai Gorge, but also in Kenya, the Olduvai Gorge article says it's in Tanzania. Is this a contradiction or does the gorge go through both countries? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.154.245.138 (talk) 00:12, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

No, Olduvai Gorge is entirely within Tanzania, but it's part of the larger Great Rift Valley where many fossils of early hominids have been found, and which is partly in Kenya. The first-discovered Homo habilis specimen, and several others, were found in Olduvai Gorge, but others were found in Kenya. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.12.69.184 (talk) 19:20, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Adjective and noun version

If we were talking about a member or members or traits of a species, does the term's conjugation change in any way? For example would I just say "a pair of homo habilis attacked a lone homo habilis, demonstrating homo habilis violence" ? Ranze (talk) 23:41, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, although in each case you should write it as Homo habilis – with the Genus given a capital 'H', the species a lower case 'h', and the whole name in italics: in extended text, you could also, after the first use, just write 'habilis'. Technically such Binomial names are in (Scientific) Latin, but few people try to work out and use the correct Latin inflections. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.12.69.184 (talk) 19:30, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

New 2.8-myo find – habilis?

The current footnote 1 in the lede links to the very recent announcement of a 2.8 million-year-old jawbone. However, the linked reference (a BBC news story rather than a scholarly paper) does not explicitly identify the jawbone as being H. habilis, although it implies ancestry to habilis. (I have been unable thus far to access any more scholarly sources for the story.)

I think we need more solid sources to confirm that the specimen is indeed considered habilis, and not some (perhaps yet-unnamed) habilis antecedant. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 18:22, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

I think the reference is to the age of the Hominini tribe and origin of Homo, not of Habilis. I agree it is far too early to assign a specific species to the new jawbone, but I don't think this reference does that, it merely confirms the (new) 2.8 mya date for Homo as a genus. Nowimnthing (talk)

it is a bad idea to give a "reference" in the form of an url to a news story in any case. I linked the paper now, but I agree with Nowimnthing, it isn't clear at all that this fossil is H. habilis "proper" rather than ancestral to H. habilis. --dab (𒁳) 23:17, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Why is Nutcracker Man mentioned?

I don't understand what the paragraph is implying, or why it's relevant. To summarize: in 1955 Mary Leakey found two H. habilis teeth; later these were classified as "milk teeth"; however, in 1959 she found the cranium of Nutcracker Man (which is a robust australopithecine and isn't H. habilis). Well - so what? What did this mean for the milk teeth? What's "however" about that? If the point is that the teeth clearly didn't belong to Nutcracker Man, that could do with more elucidation.  Card Zero  (talk) 13:39, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Can't find any Nutcracker in the current article. It seems this issue has been addressed. Also there is only a single "however" in the article at the moment – truly that must be a record for Wikipedia! – and its use even seems somewhat justified, which is even more amazing! --BjKa (talk) 21:43, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

another genus of hominin?

How come these can't be considered to be another genus of hominin, especially since they are not quite like later hominins such as H. erectus/ergaster but not quite like Australiopiths.198.85.118.64 (talk) 17:30, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

"scientists reported"

this is extremely lazy editing, to the point of simply wasting the time of people who have to clean it up.

• You never write "scientists reported". We aren't underpaid journalists, we are unpaid encyclopedists.
• You "cite" a press release dated January 2019, and turned this into "in January 2019, scientists reported". This is wrong, and shows that you haven't even glanced at the content of the press release itself. The press release reports on the publication of a special issue of an anthropological journal dedicated to the anatomy of A. sediba.
• The volume on A. sediba was published in 2018. It appears to be a review of what is known about this species to date. It isn't "scientists reporting" some new find, it is paleoanthropologists reporting on what has emerged as general consensus
• Finally, it is incredibly lazy that you, after you decided that your random url about a tenuously related topic, which you have not bothered to read must be added to this article, you simply tag it to the introduction section. This shows that not only did you not bother to read your source, you also did not bother to as much as glance over the existing article, even if just to establish where your 'addition' might fit into its structure.

Sorry about the rant, but I see this kind of thing all the time and I wanted to vent. And I see you decorate your user page with all kinds of both academic and on-wiki achievements, so one should assume that more can be expected. --dab (𒁳) 08:33, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

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Eating meat caused larger brains?

Are there conclusive evidences that eating meat caused larger brains? - or not? - could this notion be more of a guess than factual? - this notion is referred to in the "Homo habilis#Diet" section of the article - My own related comments have been published in The New York Times (see copy, in part, below) - Could there have been some other cause for larger brains? - or not?

Copied, in part, from => https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/opinion/coronavirus-meat-vegetarianism.html#permid=107161120

Thank you for an excellent article - fwiw - seems eating meat may be linked to a higher cancer risk, according to a W.H.O. report ( https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/health/report-links-some-types-of-cancer-with-processed-or-red-meat.html ) => this finding seems to be consistent with the notion that humans may not be natural meat eaters - after all, humans can't eat raw meat like cats and dogs (real meat eaters) - humans may need to cook such food first - a relatively recent development in human history - further - seems early humans, instead of chasing after rabbits, or digging up carrots, may have been more opportunistic - and may have gone from one berry patch to another - much like many other primates - support for such a notion may include studies of the pulverized dental calculus of the fossil remains of early hominins, like "Australopithecus sediba" ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228324388_The_Diet_of_Australopithecus_Sediba ) - a related discusssion may be found in the 2015 PBS film documentary, "The Dawning of Humanity", that focused on discovering the fossil remains of "Homo naledi", but which also discussed related dental calculus studies (at about 46 min/114 min) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_of_Humanity ) ( transcript: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=nova-1974&episode=s43e01 - archive copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20160304042614/https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?6tv-show=nova-1974&episode=s43e01 ) ... Template:Reflist-talk

In any case - Comments Welcome - Stay Safe and Healthy !! - Drbogdan (talk) 21:27, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

We get food poisoning relatively easily because most of us cook raw meat, and don't need to harden our stomachs towards it. It's the same reason we don't have knives for teeth like other carnivores because we have actual knives to cut up food and daintily eat. In hunter-gatherer societies, hunting and gathering are equally important. Meat is problematic in civilization because the majority of people have a comparatively inactive lifestyle (most people can't pull off an Inuit diet). Australopithecines (like A. sediba) were probably a lot more herbivorous than Homo. Consensus is meat caused bigger brains, either by providing more calories, or taking less calories to digest. H. naledi is an oddball and it's unclear how it relates to any other hominin   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:01, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Comment first in response to the article snippet posted above - I don't know what they consider "relatively recent", but humans have almost certainly been cooking for 1-1.5 million years. As for the australopithecines, they came in two basic forms: gracile and robust. The robust australopithecines are thought to have been strict vegetarians, whence they evolved their huge jaws and massive molars - to be able to process extremely hard and tough plant foods. The gracile australopithecines - among them those from whom came our direct ancestors - were likely more omnivorous, but their meat intake was probabably limited to small critters.), insects (namely termites) etc. the first evidence of butchering is not till Homo habilis, and not widespread till Homo erectus. One fact that is a litle unsettling, but there's direct evidence that it happened, was that the last remaining robust australopithecines appear to have been hunted to extinction by Homo erectus and butchered for their meat. Firejuggler86 (talk) 05:11, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

2.8 or 2.4 or 2.3 mya??

article starts with: "Archaic human species from 2.8 to 1.65 mya. ... Homo habilis (lit. 'handy man') is an extinct species of archaic human from the Early Pleistocene of East and South Africa about 2.4 million years ago to 1.4 million years ago (mya)." and in the table to the right: "Temporal range: 2.3–1.65 Ma" - now what? 2.8 or 2.4 or 2.3 mya?? sources please! HilmarHansWerner (talk) 17:12, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

It should be 2.4 to 1.65, fixed Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 17:42, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

sorry, I added my last contribution above about the "table" before seeing yours. what's the source? in the german article you find: 2.1 mya; in the french 2.3; same in the spanish... so sources please! thanx! HilmarHansWerner (talk) 23:00, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Based on those dates, the German article is using the most conservative definition H. habilis, and the French article is rounding down Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 00:12, 26 March 2025 (UTC)