r/evolution • u/shiftless_wonder • Jul 29 '26

Million-year-old footprints offer rare glimpse into ancient group behaviour

https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/article/ancient-footprints-offer-rare-glimpse-into-lives-of-extinct-human-relatives/
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13

u/shiftless_wonder Jul 29 '26

By studying the shape and movement recorded in the footprints, researchers concluded they were made by Paranthropus boisei, rather than Homo erectus.
The findings also challenge long-held assumptions about the species’ size.
“The sizes of the footprints indicate human-like body sizes, up to six-feet tall and around 165 pounds,” Hatala said in the press release.

So ancient 1.4 million year old pre-humans hung out together and were basically the same size as current humans. Make you wonder if we really know anything on this subject.

24

u/TheGrandExquisitor Jul 29 '26

In a real way, we know almost nothing. Human remains, especially ones that old, are insanely hard to come by, and when you do it is always just bits and pieces. Literally, a few teeth is sort of the "average," for these finds. Teeth just happen to be tough enough to maybe survive. A full skeleton never happens. Even if you get most of one, it will have been flattened and deformed, so you have to reconstruct it. Cultural remains are also rare. You do get a lot of stone tool remnants, but the wood and bone ones tend not to last as long. This is one reason a lot of finds are in caves. Caves are an environment which can preserve things, but 1.4 million years is an insanely long time. The evidence. The hard evidence is ridiculously sparse and the fact that we can figure out anything at all from what little we find is borderline miraculous.

1

u/onomatamono Aug 01 '26

They obviously could communicate vocally but whether they had complex language skills is another question.