{"id":7071950,"date":"2026-10-01T22:16:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T22:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7071950"},"modified":"2026-10-01T22:16:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T22:16:14","slug":"homo-erectus-in-south-africa-outnumbered-10-to-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7071950","title":{"rendered":"Homo erectus in South Africa: Outnumbered 10 to 1"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The fossil catalogued as DNH 127 came out of a loose, partly decalcified block of breccia on the southeast side of the DNH 7 Pinnacle, in the old lime-mining pit at Drimolen Main Quarry, about forty kilometres northeast of Johannesburg. The excavation records give the year as 2008. It is a right temporal bone with a piece of parietal and a scrap of occipital attached, the part of the skull behind and above the ear; the parietal wall above the suture stands 44.7 millimetres tall and is at most 7.2 millimetres thick. Nobody described it for years. Now Jesse Martin, of the Palaeoscience Labs in the Department of Archaeology and History at La Trobe University, and four co-authors have assigned it, tentatively, to <\/span>Homo erectus<\/em>. That makes it the first adult of the species from Drimolen, and at roughly 2.04 to 1.95 million years old it predates the adult <\/span>Homo erectus<\/em> fossils from Dmanisi in Georgia, which are about 1.8 million years old.<\/span><\/p>\n

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a. DNH 8 occlusal view; b. DNH 8 left lateral view; c. DNH 8 inferior view; d. DNH 8 right lateral view. Credit: <\/strong>Annals of Human Biology<\/strong><\/em> (2026). DOI: 10.1080\/03014460.2026.2725046<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The usual telling of this period treats <\/span>Homo erectus<\/em> as the species that arrived with the bigger brain and the smaller molars and simply took over, an ancestor with an obvious future. Drimolen gives a different count. Martin says that 2 million years ago <\/span>Paranthropus robustus<\/em> outnumbered <\/span>Homo erectus<\/em> at the site by more than 10 to 1, and that our ancestors \u201clooked like long shots to survive.\u201d That ten-to-one figure comes from the university\u2019s summary of the study. The paper itself reports fourteen <\/span>P. robustus<\/em> to one <\/span>H. erectus<\/em> within its batch of eighteen fossils, and calls that ratio broadly compatible with Swartkrans (Brain, 1993) and with earlier dental samples from Drimolen.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The main geological sections and features (white letters) of the Drimolen Main Quarry and the location of hominin finds (black numbers) described here. WW\u2009=\u2009western dolomite wall, CEA\u2009=\u2009Central Excavation Area, DNH7\u2009=\u2009DNH7 Pinnacle, SP\u2009=\u2009Speleothem Pinnacle, WOJ\u2009=\u2009Walls of Jericho Pinnacle, IJ\u2009=\u2009Italian Job Pinnacle, JB\u2009=\u2009Jangi Buttress, BB\u2009=\u2009Bryn Buttress, B\u2009=\u2009Bryn Pinnacle, R-Riley Pinnacle, I\u2009=\u2009Idris Pinnacle, WC\u2009=\u2009Warthog Cave, 155\u2009=\u2009DNH 155 breccia, M\u2009=\u2009Marcel Pinnacle, D\u2009=\u2009Dinofelis Pinnacle. Credit: <\/strong>Annals of Human Biology<\/strong><\/em> (2026). DOI: 10.1080\/03014460.2026.2725046<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The paper, in <\/span>Annals of Human Biology<\/em> (Martin, A. B. Leece, Stephanie Baker, Andy I. R. Herries and David S. Strait, 2026), describes eighteen cranial and mandibular specimens excavated between 1992 and 2019, most of them dug by Andre Keyser\u2019s team in the 1990s. Fourteen went to <\/span>Paranthropus robustus<\/em>, one to <\/span>Homo erectus sensu lato<\/em>, and three could not be placed beyond Hominini. The <\/span>Paranthropus<\/em> material also supports the authors\u2019 argument that the Drimolen population, named the subspecies <\/span>P. robustus ukusa<\/em>, differs from the later Swartkrans and Kromdraai B samples through gradual change over time, with less bite force at Drimolen. They reject the older alternative, that Drimolen simply held mostly females and Swartkrans mostly males.<\/span><\/p>\n

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a. DNH 127 lateral view; b. DNH 127 medial\/internal view; c. DNH 127 posterior view; d. DNH 127 inferior view; e. DNH 127 anterior view. Credit: <\/strong>Annals of Human Biology<\/strong><\/em> (2026). DOI: 10.1080\/03014460.2026.2725046<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fossil catalogued as DNH 127 came out of a loose, partly decalcified block of breccia on the southeast side of the DNH 7 Pinnacle, in the old lime-mining pit at Drimolen Main Quarry, about forty kilometres northeast of Johannesburg. The excavation records give the year as 2008. It is a right temporal bone with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7071951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11767],"tags":[4373,22485,22484,232883,6658],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7071950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anthropology","tag-africa","tag-erectus","tag-homo","tag-outnumbered","tag-south"],"yoast_head":"\nHomo erectus in South Africa: Outnumbered 10 to 1 - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7071950\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Homo erectus in South Africa: Outnumbered 10 to 1 - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The fossil catalogued as DNH 127 came out of a loose, partly decalcified block of breccia on the southeast side of the DNH 7 Pinnacle, in the old lime-mining pit at Drimolen Main Quarry, about forty kilometres northeast of Johannesburg. The excavation records give the year as 2008. 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