The History of the World Podcast, written and presented by Chris Hasler.

This is volume one, the prehistoric world.

Episode 4, Homo erectus. Oh, Homo erectus, upright man, head up straight and looking forward. In fact, we will be covering

over a million years in this week's podcast.

Homo erectus is the story of the journey of an ape man becoming a human being. Previously on the history of the World Podcast

we were looking at the very first humans who we believed

had evolved from austral epithetes,

a tree dwelling by a peedal ape.

Upon the evolution of Homo habilis, we determined that there were many different kinds of hominins

in existence that had all evolved

differently according to the local circumstances and pressures of each case.

We discussed how very ape-like these humans still were, still adept at tree climbing and

still walking in a hunched fashion.

We took a bigger look at the contemporary world of Homo habilis roughly 2 million years ago

and recognised that the world was undergoing substantial changes that were pushing Homo habilis to become stronger and more intelligent and also more

expertly capable of living life out of the trees. As we know, this week we are talking about Homo erectus, the next human evolutionary milestone.

Ugen Du Bois.

To begin the story of Homo erectus, I would like to introduce you to one of my favourite characters in the story of paleoanthropology, Mr. Eugen de Bois.

Eugen de Bois was born in a village called Aeeston in the Duchy of Lindbergh in the Netherlands in the year 1858.

From a young age, Dubois was fascinated by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Dubois was clearly a young man of academic talent, but also with an obstinate will of his

own, which comes down to us in his reflected legacy to this day.

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