Interviewee: Chris Stringer. Human origins expert Chris Stringer talks about Homo erectus and Homo ergaster. (DNAi Location: Applications > Human origins > Our family tree > Video > Much more human.)

When we come to this creature, Homo ergaster, or early Homo erectus, known now from Georgia, from a site called Dmanisi, and from Africa, we are with a creature which, in terms of it body shape, is much more human than these earlier forms where the body shape still shows many apelike features. The brain size though is small, maybe only half or two-thirds of the modern brain size, but it's certainly, recognizably for the first time I think, most people would agree this is an early human. And as we come through time, H. erectus certainly evolves, we get H. erectus continuing in the Far East, even perhaps as recently as fifty thousand years ago in Java, but for many of us H. erectus in these regions representing a side branch of human evolution.

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