Homo ergaster

Homo ergaster, also called "African Homo erectus", is an extinct chronospecies^[1] of the genus Homo.^[2] It lived in eastern and southern Africa during the early Pleistocene, between 1.8 million and 1.3 million years ago.^[2]

Homo ergaster Temporal range: Pleistocene, 1.8–1.3 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
Skull KNM-ER 3733, the Koobi Fora fossil discovered in Kenya, 1975
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Primates
Family:	Hominidae
Genus:	Homo
Species:	H. ergaster
Binomial name
†Homo ergaster Groves and Mazák, 1975

The species' period in eastern and southern Africa happened during the first part of the Pleistocene. 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

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.^[3] This means that H. ergaster was an ancestor of modern humans.

H. ergaster is one of the earliest members of the genus Homo. It may have been an ancestor to Homo erectus, or the two might have shared a common ancestor.^[4]

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.^[5]

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