In several posts I had suggested that it was possible that Homo habilis was the first hominin to leave Africa and reach Eurasia. Following some authors, I wondered if they were related to the Flores Island Hobbits, as posited by Arguea et al., 2017. But, as research advances, new analysis appears and definitions shift, possibly an earlier hominin left Africa for Asia (see my post on Australopiths in Dmanisi Georgia). However, Homo habilis have always intrigued me, as they are the first, and oldest members of our Homo genus, and their name, Habilis, is a Latin word that means "skilfull", the first in our lineage to make stone tools (Oldowan, which look like chopped pebbles or cobbles).
Recently, new research has looked into Homo habilis, trying to understand its place in the hominin tree. This post looks into two new papers published last January, on Homo habilis, and their status in our family tree.
The first one is Tattersall, I. (2026). An identity for the inscrutable Homo habilis. The Anatomical Record, 309(3), 546–549. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.70145, published on Jan. 24, 2026. Tattersall suggests that this hominin was the outcme of Leakey grouping together an assortment of bones and proclaiming they were the first stone tool makers back in 1964. At that time human-like attributes were linked to cognition, and therefore stone tools were an indicator of brainier hominins, hence it was included in the Homo genus, unlike the more primitive Australopithecines. Tattersall says that "This motley assortment is notably varied in morphology, age, and body parts represented, and it gives Homo habilis a suspiciously heterogeneous and long-lived hypodigm (approximately 2.8–1.6 Ma)... Homo habilis emerges as a relatively diminutive early hominin toolmaker that possessed a remarkably archaic upper body skeleton and was presumably a significant interactor in the woodlands and bushlands of what are now Tanzania and Kenya (and maybe of Ethiopia too) during the period centering around 1.8–2.0 Ma. "
Are they Homo?
Tattersall suggests these remains of H. habilis are not actually Homo, as they have much smaller bodies than the erectus, who are genuine Homo, and have longer arms that seem adapted to living among trees, he does not classify them as Australopiths either, he suggests a new placement outside of the Homo branch:
"On the basis of the limited material known, the habilis fossils from Olduvai and Ileret fail to qualify as Homo... That exclusion contrasts starkly with the very morphologically distinct and only slightly younger Turkana materials, such as the skeleton WT 15000 and the cranium ER 3733, that are often assigned to Homo ergaster... Homo erectus africanus.
But does this necessarily mean that the relatively diminutive ER 64060/1 individual, with its postcanine megadonty and elongated arms, should be classified as Australopithecus? Of course not. It just means that it is excluded from Homo, although not necessarily from the larger Homo clade that findings at sites such as Ethiopia's Ledi-Geraru (Villmoare et al., 2015, 2025) suggest may already have been diversifying, in parallel to the australopith one, as early as around 3 Ma"
Small, slender, and adapted to trees...
The second paper written by Grine, F. E., Yang, D., Hammond, A. S., Jungers, W. L., Lague, M. R., Mongle, C. S., Pearson, O. M., Leakey, M. G., & Leakey, L. N. (2026). New partial skeleton of Homo habilis from the upper Burgi Member, Koobi Fora Formation, Ileret, Kenya. The Anatomical Record, 309(3), 485–545. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.70100, published on Jan 13. 2026, is more forgiving (it was also cited by Tattersall). The paper focuses on a thorough analysis of the remains of a specimen known as KNM-ER 64061 from Koobi Fora (2.02–2.06 Ma), a Homo habilis.
This individual was tiny, and had less body mass than the erectus it weighed 30.7–32.7 kg (67.7-72.1 lbs) and 1.6 m tall (5.25 ft), though they try to avoid the issue, the authors recognize adaptations that imply an arboreal lifestyle:
"As a consequence of these various uncertainties and concerns, we are hesitant to infer specific behavioral repertoires for KNM-ER 64061 as an individual or for H. habilis as a species. Thus, features of the OH 7 hand (phalanges with a thicker palmar cortex and proximal and intermediate phalanges with high relative bending strengths) may be related to arboreality in H. habilis, but they may equally represent the condition inherited from a phylogenetic precursor of H. habilis that was more arboreal. Similarly, the relatively long forearm of H. habilis may have enabled a greater degree of arboreal locomotion in this species than in H. erectus, but whether arboreality was indeed practiced by H. habilis must remain a matter of speculation."
H. habilis and H. naledi
Homo habilis predates Homo erectus but both species probably overlapped for 500,000 years in East Africa, which reveals different types of archaic humans living in the same region at the same time. They also probably co-existed with the archaic-looking Homo naledi (Lee R Berger, John Hawks, Paul HGM Dirks, Marina Elliott, Eric M Roberts, 2017) which was dated to the very recent age of ~250 ky in South Africa.
This paper proposes that H. naledi with its mossaic of archaic and some (few) modern features, could be located in the Homo habilis branch of hominins: "Phylogenetic scenarios for H. naledi place its origin either: (1) somewhere among the poorly resolved branches leading to H. habilis, H. rudolfensis, H. floresiensis and Au. sediba (Berger et al., 2015; Dembo et al., 2016); Thackeray, 2015): (2) as a sister to H. erectus and larger-brained Homo including H. sapiens (Dembo et al., 2016); or (3) as a sister to a clade including H. sapiens, H. antecessor, and other archaic humans (Dembo et al., 2016) (Figure 2). Maximum parsimony analysis of a large dataset of cranial and dental traits supports scenario 1, placing H. naledi among the most basal nodes of the Homo phylogeny."
H. naledi, with a brain one-third the size of ours (and said to bury its dead and engage in rock art!!) is a controversial hominin. It seems to have existed between ~2.50 to 0.23 My ago, co-existing with the common ancestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans and H. sapiens, and also with the first humans, overlapping with us in South Africa. A second paper by Hawks et al, also from 2017, described the site where they were found, in South Africa, and includes the following image which I adapted from Fig. 36 in Hawks et al., 2017. A picture is worth more than 1,000 words. As you can see, the H. naledi and H. habilis (and A. sediba) are all very similar and different to the Homo erectus skulls, but the H. Naledi is 300 ky old, while the H. habilis ones are over 1.8 million years (My) old, and A. sediba is roughly 2 My old.
The primitive looking naledi and habilis fossils have shorter and smaller skulls with a slanted face and tend to group together in their appearance. The H. erectus are larger, and have bigger brains and elongated skulls. They are the "real" first homo people. However, if the Dmanisi people were Australopiths, then, we should not underestimate the abilities of those that preceded the homo lineage. Perhaps they too, with crude stone tools could have moved across Eurasia and, reached Sunda, Southeast Asia and Eastern Asia over 2 My ago. Are the tiny trolls, gnomes, and elves of our mythology the memory of Australopiths or Homo habilis encountered by modern humans on their trek across Eurasia and America?
Since 1959, but more recently Plummer et al., 2023, and Mongle et al., 2025 suggest that the East Africa Paranthropus boisei, a sister hominin related to ours, was capable of flaking stones with an Oldowan technology, 2.5 to 3 My ago: "These fossils suggest that P. boisei was capable of tool making and use in some capacity." So, toolmaking is not exclusive to our homo lineage.
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