The 2003 discovery of the fossil remains of Homo floresiensis was cited by paleontologist Henry Gee, editor of the journal Nature as possible evidence that humanoid cryptids like the Orang Pendek and yeti were " founded on grains of truth ".

During the next million years a process of encephalization began, and with the arrival of Homo erectus in the fossil record, cranial capacity had doubled to 850cc.

From the fossil beds of Olduvai and Lake Turkana they amassed fossils of Asutralopithecines, early Homo, and even Homo erectus.

Replica of fossil skull of Homo habilis.

Replica of fossil skull of Homo ergaster ( African Homo erectus ).

During the next million years a process of encephalization began, and with the arrival of Homo erectus in the fossil record, cranial capacity had doubled.

In China the fossil bones of ancient mammals including Homo erectus were often mistaken for “ dragon bones ” and used as medicine and aphrodisiacs.

Around 1. 8 million years ago, Homo ergaster first appeared in the fossil record in Africa.

The fossil record shows Homo sapiens living in southern and eastern Africa at least 100, 000 and possibly 150, 000 years ago.

Some paleoanthropologists regard the taxon as invalid, made up of fossil specimens of Australopithecus and Homo.

For the most part the Australopithecus species A. afarensis, A. africanus, and A. anamensis either disappeared from the fossil record before the appearance of early humans or seem to have been the ancestors of Homo habilis, yet P. boisei and P. aethiopicus continued to evolve along a separate path distinct and unrelated to early humans.

In particular, if Toumaï is a direct human ancestor, then its facial features bring the status of Australopithecus into doubt because its thickened brow ridges were reported to be similar to those of some later fossil hominids ( notably Homo erectus ), whereas this morphology differs from that observed in all australopithecines, most fossil hominids and extant humans.

On the other hand increase in cranial capacity occurs quite late in the fossil record: Homo habilis ( approx.

Several objects made of bone and flint stone and also two human molars and incisors belonging to fossil Homo erectus have been found in Fontana Ranuccio.

The Yuanmou Man, a Homo erectus fossil unearthed by railway engineers in the 1960s, has been determined to be the oldest known hominid fossil in China.

In 1726, the Swiss physician Johann Jakob Scheuchzer described a fossil as Homo diluvii testis ( Latin: Evidence of a diluvian human ), believing it to be the remains of a human being that drowned in the biblical Deluge.

UR 501 ( original specimen ), the oldest fossil of Genus Homo

KNM-ER 1802 is a lower-jaw fossil that is thought to be of a Homo rudolfensis.

These stark differences indicated that this fossil must have belonged to a different species, eventually dubbed Homo habilis.

In botany, the author abbreviation used to indicate Linnaeus as the authority for species ' names is L. In 1959, Carl Linnaeus was designated as the lectotype for Homo sapiens, which means that following the nomenclatural rules, Homo sapiens was validly defined as the animal species to which Linnaeus belonged.

What is now China was inhabited by Homo erectus more than a million years ago.

The Greek Orthodox allege that the real place that Jesus was held was the similarly named Prison of Christ, within their Monastery of the Praetorium, located near the Church of Ecce Homo, at the first station on the Via Dolorosa.

In 1995, one of the oldest hominids, representing a possible link between Homo erectus and an archaic Homo sapiens was found in Buya, Eritrea by Italian scientists dated to over 1 million years old ( the oldest of its kind ), providing a link between hominids and the earliest humans.

Furthermore it is believed that the Eritrean section of the Danakil Depression was a major player in terms of human evolution and may " document the entire evolution of Homo erectus up to the transition to anatomically modern humans.

Despite the 1891 discovery by Eugène Dubois of what is now called Homo erectus at Trinil, Java, it was only in the 1920s when such fossils were discovered in Africa, that intermediate species began to accumulate.

It was considered to be the first species of the genus Homo until May 2010, when a new species, Homo gautengensis was discovered in South Africa, that most likely arose earlier than Homo habilis.

Scientists have suggested that this was another Homo habilis, but this has not been confirmed.

They argue that when most of the Oldowan tools were found in association with human fossils, Homo was always present, but Paranthropus was not.

Some suggest Neanderthal, Homo erectus, or Homo heidelbergensis to be the creature, but no remains of any of those species have been found in the Americas.

Perhaps the most famous specimen of Homo erectus found in China is the so-called Peking Man discovered in 1923-27.

A number of other changes have also characterized the evolution of humans, among them an increased importance on vision rather than smell ; a smaller gut ; loss of body hair ; evolution of sweat glands ; a change in the shape of the dental arcade from being u-shaped to being parabolic ; development of a chin ( only found in Homo sapiens ), development of styloid processes ; development of a descended larynx.

The earliest transitional fossils between H. ergaster / erectus and Archaic H. sapiens are from Africa such as Homo rhodesiensis, but seemingly transitional forms are also found at Dmanisi, Georgia.

A famous example of Homo erectus is Peking Man ; others were found in Asia ( notably in Indonesia ), Africa, and Europe.

Many paleoanthropologists now use the term Homo ergaster for the non-Asian forms of this group, and reserve Homo erectus only for those fossils that are found in Asia and meet certain skeletal and dental requirements which differ slightly from H. ergaster.

Most paleoanthropologists agree that the early " Homo " species were indeed responsible for most of the Oldowan tools found.

Fossilised remains of Homo erectus, popularly known as the " Java Man " were first discovered by the Dutch anatomist Eugène Dubois at Trinil in 1891, and are at least 700, 000 years old, at that time the oldest human ancestor ever found.

Further Homo erectus fossils of a similar age were found at Sangiran in the 1930 ` s by the anthropologist Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald, who in the same time period also uncovered fossils at Ngandong alongside more advanced tools, re-dated in 2011 to between 550, 000 and 143, 000 years old.

One of the most famous and complete hominid skeletons ever discovered was the 1. 6 million year old Homo erectus known as the Turkana Boy which was found by Kamoya Kimeu in 1984 on an excavation led by Richard Leakey.

Archaeologists have found prehistoric Homo sapiens skeletons in the region, as well as numerous objects and vestiges of the Gravettian culture, principally in the river valleys of Nitra, Hron, Ipeľ, Váh and as far as the city of Žilina, and near the foot of the Vihorlat, Inovec, and Tribeč mountains, as well as in the Myjava Mountains.

No earlier evidence of human occupation has been found, but the island almost certainly formed part of the land bridge used for the settlement of Australia and New Guinea by at least 40, 000 BC There is no evidence of Homo erectus having reached Sulawesi ; crude stone tools first discovered in 1947 on the right bank of the Walennae river at Berru, which were thought to date to the Pleistocene on the basis of their association with vertebrate fossils, are now thought to date to perhaps 50, 000 BC

Fragments of Australopithecus garhi, Australopithecus aethiopicus and Homo, possibly Homo habilis, have been found in sites near the age of the oldest tools.

Isolated remains of Homo erectus found in Hathnora in the Narmada Valley indicate that Madhya Pradesh might have been inhabited since the Middle Pleistocene era, around 500, 000 years ago.

No definite Homo erectus has been found in the Korean Peninsula, though a possible Homo erectus has been reported.

" Here, a calcium-rich white clay was found alongside the bones of Homo habilis ( the immediate predecessor of Homo sapiens ).