Homo ergaster

Homo ergaster, also called "African Homo erectus", is an extinct chronospecieschronospecies: a species distinguished more by its period of existence than by its specific traits. of the genus Homo. It lived in eastern and southern Africa during the early Pleistocene epoch, between 1.8 million and 1.3 million years ago.

During this epoch, the global climate cooled and the ice ages began. The rainforests in Africa shrunk, and the savannahs and open forests expanded. H. ergaster was well suited to these environments and did well there.

 Name 
The name ergaster means "workman". This refers to the revolutionary Acheulean hand axe industry developed by the species. 

 Ancestry 
H. ergaster is one of the earliest members of the genus Homo. 

Scholars still disagree about how H. ergaster's ancestry and how it should be classified. However, most accept that H. ergaster was the direct ancestor of Asian Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo heidelbergensis, and hence Homo sapiens. This means that H. ergaster was an ancestor of modern humans.

It may have been an ancestor to Homo erectus, or the two might have shared a common ancestor. 

Some paleoanthropologists think H. ergaster is just the African variety of H. erectus. There are Asian fossils of H. erectus, which was the first human species to spread from Africa.Antón S.C. 2003. Natural history of Homo erectus. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 122: 126–170. 

 Related pages 
Turkana boy

 References 

Category:Hominins
Category:Prehistoric Africa