Changes

Before the Neanderthals roamed across Europe and parts of Asia, <i>Homo -erectus</i> was the dominant hominin species on Earth. It first appeared in Africa about two million years ago and lived until at least 108,000 years ago. Scholars was once thought that Neanderthals and modern humans directly evolved from <i>Homo -erectus</i>, although that hypothesis has been challenged in recent years. Neanderthals and modern humans may be directly descended from <i>Homo -erectus</i>, but it may also be that they are just closely related and from collateral branches of the same family tree. <ref> Fergusson, Kennan. “What Was Politics to the Denisovan?” <i>Political Theory</i> 42 (2014) p. 170</ref> The common ancestor of the Neanderthals and modern humans is now believed to have been a sub-species of <i>Homo erectus</i> that many anthropologists now argue was a completely unique species of homo.

As <i>Homo -erectus</i> emerged from Africa and spread across Asia and Europe, a subspecies emerged about 600,000 years ago, now known as <i>Homo -heidelbergensis</i>, which lived until about 250,000 years ago. <i>Homo -heidelbergensis</i> is so named because it was first discovered in a sand quarry near Heidelberg, Germany in 1907. <ref> Klein, Richard G. <i>The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins.</i> Third Edition. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), p. 311</ref>

As already stated, the relationship between <i>Homo -heidelbergensis</i> and <i>Homo -erectus</i> is not entirely clear, although Klein and many other leading anthropologists now believe that <i>heidelbergensis</i> descended from <i>erectus</i> but ultimately formed its own branch, leaving Africa about 700,000 to 600,000 years ago, eventually becoming the common ancestor of <i>Homo sapiens</i> (modern humans) and <i>Homo neanderthalensis</i> (Neanderthals). <ref> Klein, p. 280</ref> Once in Europe, <i>Homo -heidelbergensis</i> quickly changed, relatively speaking, to give birth to the Neanderthals.