Were erectus curious, intelligent, and sensitive humans?

A recent publication by Barkai, R., and Shalata, M., 2026, describes the finding of Acheulean tools crafted by Homo erectus using stones that contained fossils, holes, and geodes, which made them wonder if these hominins were attracted to them for magical reasons, and ask if they were sensible, intelligent, and mystical beings. (Lower Palaeolithic Tools of Potency: Handaxes Shaped around Fossils and Other Extraordinary Features at Sakhnin Valley, Israel. Tel Aviv, 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/03344355.2026.2637187)

The paper's abstract notes that "The handaxes reported here are part of a larger collection of hundreds of tools bearing typical Levantine Lower Palaeolithic Acheulean characteristics. What makes these handaxes particularly noteworthy is that they were shaped around fossil imprints or other geological features embedded in the selected flint nodule.. While thousands of handaxes are documented from Lower Old World Palaeolithic sites, fossil-bearing handaxes are extremely rare and garner special attention. This collection of unique bifaces provides valuable insight into their makers’ technological and aesthetic preferences, worldviews and relationship with stone. We propose that these handaxes served as tools and mediators between humans and the cosmos, conceived as objects of potency enhanced by the primeval fossil imprints and unique geological features within the stone. The richly embellished rocky landscape of Sakhnin Valley, particularly with its abundant geodes, may have encouraged early humans to express their profound and extraordinary relationships with the cosmos via stones."

The authors note that the flint used to make tools was selected by the Homo erectus who lived in this area (500,000 to 200,000 years ago), and they mostly chose flawless stones, however "Only a few handaxes, about one-tenth of those recovered during our survey, exhibit fossil imprints or other geological features. In addition, these features are located at prominent and distinctive spots on the biface, mostly at the centre of one of its faces. It thus appears that the handaxe was shaped around this feature... We therefore assume that flint nodules bearing fossils and geological features attracted the attention of Acheulean knappers and were intentionally collected by humans, who valued these features for one reason or another. Similarly, we suggest that knapping was conducted to position these features prominently, emphasising their visibility when holding or displaying the handaxe." Below are some images of these remarkable tools.

Acheulean tools with fossils, geodes or other structures in them. Source

This article suggests that the some aesthetic advances noticed during the Acheulean period, like the use of ochre, and these fossils and geodes deliberately used to make handaxes shows that these ancestral humans were developing and evolving a more advanced cognition. The authors suggest that this change in their intelligence was promoted by a change in their enviornment during this period. After hundreds of millennia of stability, their typical prey, elephants dwindled, and they had to adapt to other megafaunal food sources. Anxiety set in, and they developed a new perspective, where a cosmovision evolved. Rituals, symbolism, and magic developed. Stones had life, they were tools for hunting, and for this reason, shapes and distinctive features would be highly appreciated as they held power, or "mana". Magic could help them hunt better.

The interesting part of this article is that it portrays erectus differently from the usual cold description given by archaeology, which tends to picture them as primitive, brutal, with a limited intellect, thick-skulled, low-foreheaded, semi-human creatures that were static in time: they made the same Acheulean stone tools for 2 million years without developing any new technology. This depiction tends to make us think of them as very dumb creatures. We even doubt if they managed to master the art of fire making or build boats.

When an incised shell was found back in 2014 (see post), reported by a paper published in Nature, that was 430,000 to 540,000-years-old, the only possible crator of the shell engraved with geometric patterns, was the Homo erectus since no other humans lived in that region at that time. This was the first discovery to suggest that symbolic thought, something believed to be unique to modern humans, like us and the Neanderthals, was also shared by our distant and ancient relative, the H. erectus.

I find it relevant because Homo erectus lived for almost 2 million years in Eurasia and Africa, adapting to a changing environment and developing stronger cognitive abilities, while we, the Homo sapiens have only been around for one-seventh of that time (just 300 ky since the first alleged remains of a H. sapiens were discovered in Morocco), and most of that time we weren't as smart as we are now.

As I wrote back in 2014: "A smarter H. erectus is interesting, it means that 500 kya they could have not only engraved mussel shells but also, dealt with the cold Arctic climate and walked across Beringia into the Americas." I still feel the same way. These people were hardy, intelligent, sensitive, and well adapted to their environments, from the cold climate of northern China to the hot tropical jungles of Java, Indonesia. They were survivors.

To be Continued: Homo erectus in Siberia 800 to 400 kya

As we will see in my next posts, there were ancient humans living in Siberia, at sites far north, in the cold regions not far from Beringia, 400 to 800 thousand years ago. Considering the timeline, they were ver probably erectus. These people had the time, the survival abilities, and the intelligence to move east, and may have been able to reach America.

---

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Mosquitoes with a taste for human blood evolved first in Asia than in Africa, and did so 2.9 to 1.6 Ma

A research paper published in Nature on February 26, 2026, used some interesting genetic studies to support the idea that mosquitoes in Southeast Asia evolved a taste for human blood (anthropophily) at the time that the first hominins reached the area (Homo erectus). It is an interesting paper as it used data from the study of insects to confirm some ancient anthropological dates.

These are the details of this recent paper published in Nature on Feb. 26, 2026: Singh, U.S., Harbach, R.E., Hii, J. et al. Early hominin arrival in Southeast Asia triggered the evolution of major human malaria vectors. Sci Rep 16, 6973 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-35456-y

An ancient relationship: homo and mosquitoes. Source

In the abstract, it mentions that some species belonging to a group called Leucosphyrus, part of the Anopheles mosquitoes that live in Southeast Asia not only transmit malaria, they are also fine tuned to drinking human blood. Other mosquitoes in the region occupy different niches, feeding off other monkeys (non-human primates or NHP) and transmit NHP malaria variants. This study analyzed the genes of mosquitoes from 11 species (including their mtDNA) and built dated phylogenetic trees for them.

The paper found that the original, basal species of mosquitoes in this region were monkey-feeding ones, living in what is now Malaysia, Borneo, and the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra, when this area was linked by a now submerged continental shelf, into Sundaland. During that time (Pliocene) the area was covered by a lush rainforest. The authors believe that "anthropophily most likely evolved once, involving adaptive introgression, in the early Pleistocene in Sundaland, giving rise to multiple descendent anthropophilic species. Such early origination of anthropophily must necessarily have been in response to the arrival of early hominins (Homo erectus) rather than anatomically modern humans, likely associated with loss and fragmentation of rainforests during the early Pleistocene. The early origination of anthropophily also provides independent non-archaeological evidence supporting the limited fossil record of early hominin colonization in Southeast Asia around 1.8 Mya." This date is roughly when Homo erectus reached the area.

The article reveals that mosquitoes are host-specific and that many genes are involved in this specificity. So "multiple genetic changes at these and other genes are required for the evolution of anthropophily, i.e. a strong, evolved preference for human blood. It is not surprising therefore that anthropophily is uncommon amongst the ~ 3500 known mosquito species. It is therefore more parsimonious to consider that anthropophily within a taxon has a single origin. Accordingly, it is improbable that there were multiple independent switches to anthropophily in the human-preferring species of the Dirus and Balabacensis Clades, which diverged around 1.3–0.5 Mya. Even taking into account some uncertainty in the molecular clock used for these divergence estimates these clades far predate the arrival of anatomically modern humans in SE Asia 76,000–63,000 years ago. We therefore reject with confidence the hypothesis that anthropophily in the Leucosphyrus Subgroup evolved in response to the arrival of modern humans in SE Asia."

Therefore it was an ancient event, long before human beings appeared in Africa.

The article adds that "Using the same molecular clock rate as applied in this study and a species tree, anthropophily would be inferred to have evolved ~ 509,000–61,000 years ago in the lineage leading to the major African malaria vectors, An. gambiae and An. coluzzii... Since An. gambiae originates in West African forests the switch to anthropophilly may instead have occurred in response to modern humans entering this forested region ~ 150,000 years ago. The emergence of anthropophily in the domestic form of Aedes aegypti and the molestus ecotype of Culex pipiens, both date to within the last 10,000 years, apparently in response to growing human populations and environmental change." So, the African human-feeding mosquitoes took place independently, and later than the SE Asian event(

Finally, the article "indicates that anthropophily in the Leucosphyrus Subgroup emerged much earlier than in other anthropophilic mosquito species. If a strictly bifurcating tree were assumed, anthropophily could have evolved either: by the time of node N1 [95% CI: 2.9–1.8 Mya] and subsequently been lost in the lineage leading to An. nemophilous and An. introlatus; or evolved twice along the lineages leading to the Dirus Clade (N3, 1.6 Mya [95% CI: 2.0–1.2 Mya]) and the Balabacensis Clade (N5, 0.5 Mya [95% CI: 0.7–0.4 Mya]).... We therefore consider the most parsimonious argument for the evolution of anthropophily in the Leucosphyrus Subgroup to be that it evolved once only through the process of adaptive introgression at nodes N1/N2 as this accommodates the multiplicity of genes underlying the trait and negates any need to invoke loss of this trait. According to this hypothesis, anthropophily would have evolved between the extremes of the N1 and N2 confidence intervals i.e. between 2.9 and 1.6 mya (Fig. 3) when all the lineages were in Sundaland, and prior to the divergence of the Dirus Clade (node N3, 1.6 Mya [95% CI: 2.0–1.2 Mya]) further north in Indochina. This hypothesis could be tested against the above alternatives by identifying the genes underlying anthropophily and characterizing their evolutionary history."

The interesting part in the preceding text is that dates, which on the "older" tip of the scale reach 2.9 and 2 million years back. This is in line with the recent findings in Eurasia about an early Homo erectus dispersal across Asia.

The authors continue (highlight is mine): "Dating of the evolution of anthropophily in the Leucosphyrus Group to 2.9–1.6 mya overlaps with the earliest proposed date for the arrival of early hominins (Homo erectus) into Sundaland at 1.8 Mya, but not with the more recent proposed date of 1.3 Mya. Our findings suggest that anthropophily in the Leucosphyrus Group emerged in Sundaland in the early Pleistocene in response to the arrival of early hominins who must have not only been present in this region by this time but must have been in substantial numbers to drive adaptation to human host preference. This supports the hypothesis of Husson et al. that early hominins were present and abundant in Sundaland ~ 1.8 Mya, prior to their dispersal via land bridges to Java. Middle Pleistocene fossils of Homo erectus indicate their prolonged occupation on the exposed Sundaland landmass, likely associated with extensive river systems. In the context of the very fragmentary nature of the fossil record in tropical SE Asia our findings contribute an important piece of evidence to the broader puzzle of the colonization of hominins in insular Southeast Asia".

Closing Comments

These findings add up to the other evidence mentioned in recent posts, suggesting a very early out of Africa (or even an Eurasian origin of hominins!). I have tried to learn more about American mosquitoes that feed on humans, but research seems to be scarce in this area other than focusing on the main vectors of malaria, dengue, yellow fever, Zika, and chikungunya (see this 2022 paper as an example). If there are anthropophilic mosiquitoes in America that could be dated, what dates would they provide? (several strains reached America after the European discovery, from Africa and Eurasia, the Aedes aegypti vector of yellow fever and Zika) originated in Africa and arrived with the slave trade, and Aedes albopictus, the "Asian tiger mosquito" arrived 40 years ago, from Asia, in used tires! Would other local strains shed light on the date of the peopling of America?

---

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Australopithecines are not our ancestors at all (says study)

Following my previous post about an Eurasian origin of hominins, I stumbled upon a paper by Vaneechoutte, Mansfeld, Munro and Verhaegen (2024), that proposes a radical idea, that knuckle-walking chimpancees are not the ancestors of the upright-biped homo grop (that encompasses humans). It argues that chimps are the ancestors of australopithecines but not ours. Instead, they suggest that an older (6-9 million years ago) upright walking Eurasian Graecopithecus-like ape, like the one that left its footprints in Crete 6 Ma, split into two groups, one that entered Africa forming an ardipithecus-like species some 4.3-6 Ma, which led to Australopithecines, who were more hunched, and these in turn led to gorillas and pan (chimpancees) that are knuckle walkers. In the meantime, in Eurasia, through a yet unknown missing-link, Homo erectus appeared 2 Ma, later some migrated back into Africa, originating Homo sapiens there.

Homo, as a group originated in Eurasia.

This is the article: Mario Vaneechoutte, Frances Mansfield, Stephen Munro, and Marc Verhaegen. (2024), Have We Been Barking up the Wrong Ancestral Tree? Australopithecines Are Probably Not Our Ancestors. Nat. Anthropol. 2024, 2(1), 10007; DOI: 10.35534/natanthropol.2023.10007 🔓

The paper is lenghty and juicy, it refutes the savannah adaptation of Australopiths (standing on two feet let them see predators from afar), and uses bones, skulls and footprint shapes to attack the chimp → Australopithecus → Homo evolution.

Bipedalism existed before Australopithecus appeared, by the way these creatures were arboreal (according to the authors), and the environment didn't pressure them to stand on two feet: "grassland savannahs had not been expanding in Africa at the time of the first australopithecines (approx. 4 Ma)... australopithecines were shown to have clear climbing adaptations, and to have lived in wetland, woodland or forest margins, they did not run long distances over open plains to chase prey or to scavenge carcasses because they were poor runners and because they were largely vegetarian"

Below is the "tree" suggested by the authors. Notice how the Australopiths evolve into chimps and gorillas.

Hominins evolved in Eurasia, not Africa

The Graecopithecus is of interest for several reasons, one, is that its foot prints showing a bipedal walking position were dated to 6.15 million years ago (Ma), the second is that they were found on Crete, an island that at that time was isolated in the eastern Mediterranean, and was never in contact with Africa, and finally, its age places it outside of Africa, as the oldest member of the hominin family! Let's look at each of these points.

Graecopyhtecus

As we will see below, there are several fossil remains and strong evidence suggesting that the Hominidae, a group that embraces all of the great apes, and the Homininae, the group that includes all African great apes, the Australopithecus species, and the genus Homo, originated in the Balkans region of Europe, and Western Asia, in Anatolia, Turkey, and the Caucasus.

These Eurasian ancestors lived before the split between the branches that lead to gorillas, chmipancees, australopithecus, and homo (our lineage).

Spassov et al., (2012) reported a premolar belonging to a hominid that was found in a quarry in Azmaka, Bulgaria, Europe. It was dated at around 7 Ma. Though it is a pre-human hominid, it was not alone. The paper mentions other similar hominids living in Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus around that time.

The Ouranopithecus macedoniensis from the north of Geece and the Ankarapithecus meteai from Turkey are roughly 8.7 to 9.9 Ma. The Anatolian Ouranopithecus turkae is 7.5 yo 8.7 Ma. The Dryopithecus from Udabno (Georgia) is also coeval with these hominids.

Fuss et al., (2017) -with members of the Spassov study- classed the Bulgarian specimen as a member of the Graecopithecus group, and compared the teet with the original specimen of that group, found in Pyrgos Vassilissis, near Athens, in Greece during the final days of World War II. This specimen is now known as Graecopithecus freybergi. They were given an age ranging from 7.175 Ma to 7.24 Ma. They found that they teeth are different from those of the Ouranopithecus and have features that "point to a possible phylogenetic affinity with hominin... and therefore, provides intriguing evidence of what could be the oldest known hominin."

Remarkably, these Miocene primates were living in the Balkan-Anatolian region, far from Africa, the purported homeland of hominins. And this is a surprising find!

In Africa there are two primates with a similar age, the Orrorin tugenensis, discovered in 2001 in Tugen, Kenya and dated to 5.8 to 6.0 Ma, which appears to have an upright posture, and the Sahelanthropus tchadensis roughly 6-7 Ma. Note that Macchiarelli et al. (2020) suggested based on the shape of the leg-bone of the Sahelanthropus, that it "belongs to an individual that was not habitually bipedal."

Despite the presence of ancient African primates that could potentially be hominins, Fuss et al. confidently assert that "More fossils are needed but at this point it seems likely that the Eastern Mediterranean needs to be considered as just as likely a place of hominine diversification and hominin origins as tropical Africa."

The Fossil footprints in Crete

The prints discovered in Trachilos, close to Kissamos, on the nortwestern tip of Crete, Greece, were reported by Gierlinski, G. D. et al. in 2017 (Possible hominin footprints from the Late Miocene (C. 5.7 Ma) of Crete?. Proc. Geol. Assoc. 128, 697–710. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.Pgeola.2017.07.006), who noted that their shape suggested that "the trackmaker was a basal member of the clade Hominini." However, due to the distance separating the island of Crete from tropical Africa, the authors wonder if they belong to some "hitherto unknown late Miocene primate that convergently evolved human-like foot anatomy." Meaning that it was a primate that had prints similar to hominins, but, was not of our same lineage.

The tracks are clearly hominin, smaller than any known hominin tracks. Being 5.7 Ma, they are 2 million years older than the previously oldest hominin tracks.

A paper published in Nature by Uwe Kirscher et al., (2021) analyzed the age of the prints, and dated them with an age of approximately 6.05 Ma, which is 300,000 years older than the previous estimates.

Yet another paper published in 2017 by Böhme et al., is terminant regarding the hominin nature of the Graecopithecus:

"Graecopithecus predates by several hundred thousand years the next youngest candidate hominin Sahelanthropus, which occupied the southern Saharan tropics after its earliest Messinian desertification. Given the potential hominin affinity of Graecopithecus, our results suggest that the Pan-Homo split predated the Messinian and that the chimpanzee–human last common ancestor thrived in the Mediterranean region. The emerging Saharan and Arabian desert belt thereby possibly acted as a vicariant agent [this means the desert was a barrier between species]. Our conclusions support views that major Miocene hominid radiations occurred outside Africa and endorse the hypothesis that the hominin clade arose in the Eastern Mediterranean."

Yet the pro-African origin scholars don't like this at all! A 2017 paper published in South Africa goes overboard trying to refute the hominin nature of the Eurasian hominin: "... Even if Graecopithecus can be attributed to Hominini, the fact that it is older than Sahelanthropus does not make it the basal-most representative of this clade... the evolutionary root of humankind would definitely remain in Africa... This means that the phylogenetic relationship between Graecopithecus and Hominini is as yet not confirmed."

Finally, we should also note that this period was one of great changes in the Mediterranean basin. The closure of the Strait of Gibralter led to the evaporation of the Mediterranean, which impacted on the climate, around 5.5 Ma. The Sahara also became a desert. Then, the Atlantic Ocean breached Gibraltar during the Zanclean flood, that refilled the Mediterranean basin.

How did it reach Crete? (Walking)

Crete was splitting from the Balkans' mainland due to a fault that created the Aegean Sea. Many mammals like pigs, deer, a horse species, a bovid, hyaenids, proboscideans reached what is now Crete by land, before it split some 5 Ma. This implies that the individual who made the tracks in Trachilos walked along a peninsula linking Greece with Crete. However, there never was any land bridges at that time, linking Crete with Africa. We can ignore a possible African origin for this individual.

Recent Publications on this subject

More recent findings, Ayla Sevim-Erol et al., (2023) reports a new ape-genus, Anadoluvius, dated at 8.7 Ma, which was discovered in Anatolia, Turkey. The paper places the Balkanic-Anatolian speciments in "at least three hominine genera, Ouranopithecus, Graecopithecus, and Anadoluvius" it finds that they probably evolved from older European hominines. The authors don't support the idea that they evolved from African hominines that dispersed into Europe because there is no evidence of any ancestral lineages in Africa 10 to 13 Ma, and because their analysis does not support it.

Anadoluvius skull. Source

The effect on Human Evolution

Another recent paper by Mansfield and Vaneechoutte (2024) proposes a new hypothesis about the split between Pan (chimpancees), Gorillas, and Homo, that had their last common ancestor outside of Africa, in the Europe-Anatolian region. They argue that the dissecation of the Mediterranean forced the "separate branches of European hominids to migrate out of the Mediterranean region. We argue that the lineages leading to Gorilla and Pan independently migrated into Africa, while the lineage leading to Homo went in another direction. Thereafter, the Zanclean Megaflood (5.3 Ma) — hich caused the Mediterranean to refill very quickly— may have cut off the migration route between Eurasia and Africa at the Sinai Peninsula, isolating a small population (the putative Homo lineage) on the Arabian Peninsula / Red Sea coast during a period of hyperaridity. The other group (Pan lineage) crossed into Africa, where it subsequently diversified into various species of Australopithecus."

The authors also suggest that there could have been "multiple migrations of different hominid species from Europe to Africa between 10.0–6.0 Ma, giving rise to various orthograde, evidently bipedal genera in Africa such as Sahelanthropus, Orrorin, Ardipithecus and Australo-pithecus." But those that migrated during the arid period of Mediterranean dissecation were blocked out of Africa by the vast Zanclean flood, that in two years filled up the Mediterranean. This paper suggests that "So great was the impact of the Zanclean flood, 5.33 Ma, that the waters of the Mediterranean might have mingled with those of the Red Sea, submerging the land bridge between the Arabian and African plates, thereby cutting off the migratory route into Africa and potentially flooding the Ethiopian Afar Danakil depression of the Middle Awash region..." Then chimps split from our ancestral lineage 5-6 Ma and entered Africa while the Homo lineage remained isolated in Westerm Asia!

"the putative Homo lineage remaining isolated from all other Hominini for a long period (possibly the entire Pliocene) in a relatively small region, and this would explain the absence of PtERV1 genetic elements in our genome, and many of the aberrant features unique to our genus. Then, approximately ~1.8–1.6 Ma, there is the first indisputable evidence of our genus Homo, radically different from small-brained, short-legged australopithecines or habilines in Africa. Fossils of H. erectus (s.l.) appear more or less synchronously in locations as far apart as eastern China and southern Africa. The Pan lineage, on the other hand, did not become isolated and thus was able to further expand and diverge within the African continent as various lineages of the more robust bipedal hominids, such as South African A. africanus, A. sediba, and Paranthropus robustus, all of which possess numerous characters that align with extant chimpanzees / bonobo."

The Homo erectus that originated in the Arabian Peninsula then moved into Africa, to Georgia, and East, to China, and Indonesia: "If the original members of our genus Homo had been cut off from the rest of the world in the Red Sea coastal zone during the Pliocene, the drop in sea-levels in the early Pleistocene, ~2.6 Ma, would have opened up coastal or fluvial migration routes in several directions all at once; places where evidence of early Homo appears: west into Africa (Nariokotome, Koobi Fora), north into Georgia (Dmanisi), east into Indonesia (Java) and China (Yuanmou)."

I will look into another paper that supports this idea in my next post.

---

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©