Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Some workers have suggested that the ER 1481 and ER 1472 femurs, and other bones attributed to Homo habilis, should be attributed to Homo erectus (Wood 1987, p. 188).

Even before the discovery of OH 62, Kennedy (1983) assigned the ER 1481 femur to Homo erectus. Kennedy’s view would involve extending the age of African Homo erectus from about 1.6 million to at least 2 million years, since femur ER 1481 was found below the KBS Tuff at Koobi Fora.

In coming to her conclusion, Kennedy relied on comparative analysis of several femoral shaft measurements. But Trinkaus (1984, p. 137) noted that out of these measurements only one, the midshaft diameter, showed a “significant difference” (more than two standard deviations from the mean) from a sample of early anatomically modern human femurs. Trinkaus’s early anatomically modern human sample i ncluded 24 fossil femurs from Cro-Magnon, Predmost, and other early Homo sapiens sapiens sites. We suspect, however, that if the midshaft diameter of ER 1481 were compared with a sample that represented the total variation among living humans, it would fall closer to the mean. The other femoral shaft measurements of ER 1481 reported by Kennedy all fell within the range of early anatomically modern humans. This suggests that ER 1481 might be assigned to Homo sapiens rather than Homo erectus.

There are other reasons why attribution of the ER 1481 and ER 1472 femurs to Homo erectus is questionable. Since the discovery of Java man in the 1890s, scientists have written numerous books and articles describing femurs said to be those of Homo erectus. But until recently, no femurs, or other postcranial bones, have ever been found in direct connection with a cranium of Homo erectus. Therefore, it is not absolutely certain that any of the femurs scientists had previously described actually belonged to Homo erectus individuals.

In 1984, however, members of Richard Leakey’s team found a Homo erectus boy (KNM-WT 15000) at Lake Turkana. KNM-WT 15000 was assigned an age of 1.6 million years. The skeleton comprised associated cranial and postcranial elements, including the femur (Brown et al. 1985, p. 788).

According to the discoverers (Brown et al. 1985, p. 791), several features of the KNM-WT 15000 Homo erectus femur were different from those normally encountered in Homo sapiens. Other workers (Johanson et al. 1987, p. 209) also called attention to “Australopithecus-like aspects of . . . proximal femoral anatomy in early Homo erectus (KNM-WT 15000).” On the other hand, several workers have found the KNM-ER 1481 femur to be very much like modern human femurs and unlike those of australopithecines (Section 11.6.3).

Furthermore, Day and Molleson (1973, p. 128) said that most of the hominid femurs generally attributed to Homo erectus (such as the OH 28 femur from Olduvai Gorge and the Sinanthropus femurs from Zhoukoudian) were unlike those of modern human beings.

But Day and Molleson found the Java man femurs from Trinil, generally classified as Homo erectus, to be distinct from the OH 28 and Chinese Homo erectus femurs and almost identical to those of modern humans. They thus concluded that the Trinil femurs belonged not to Homo erectus but to anatomically modern humans (Section 7.1.8). This may put Homo sapiens sapiens at the Trinil site about 800,000 years ago.

In a study by Wood (1976), the ER 1481 and ER 1472 femurs came closer to the human mean in several key features than the Trinil I femur, which Day and Molleson said was anatomically modern and distinct from that of Homo erectus.

All of this suggests that it would not be correct to assign the anatomically modern ER 1481 and ER 1472 femurs to either Homo erectus or Homo habilis.

11.7.2 The Leap From Oh 62 to Knm-Wt 15000

The discoverers of OH 62 had to grapple with the evolutionary link between the new, more apelike Homo habilis and Homo erectus. “The juxtaposition of an otherwise relatively derived H. erectus postcranium at ~ 1.6 Myr (KNM-WT 15000) and a postcranially primitive H. habilis at ~ 1.8 Myr (OH 62) may imply an abrupt transition between these taxa in eastern Africa,” they stated (Johanson et al. 1987, p. 209). In paleoanthropology, the term “derived” is applied to a skeletal element that has supposedly undergone a significant and progressive morphological change relative to the same element in a supposedly ancestral form.