Stature, body mass, and brain size: A two-million-year odyssey

Abstract

Physical size has been critical in the evolutionary success of the genus Homo over the past 2.4 million-years. An acceleration in the expansion of savannah grasslands in Africa from 1.6Ma to 1.2Ma witnessed concomitant increases in physical stature (150–170cm), weight (50–70kg), and brain size (750–900cm3). With the onset of 100,000year Middle Pleistocene glacial cycles (“ice ages”) some 780,000years ago, large-bodied Homo groups had reached modern size and had successfully dispersed from equatorial Africa, Central, and Southeast Asia to high-latitude localities in Atlantic Europe and North East Asia. While there is support for incursions of multiple Homo lineages to West Asia and Continental Europe at this time, data does not favour a persistence of Homo erectus beyond ∼400,000years ago in Africa, west and Central Asia, and Europe. Novel Middle Pleistocene Homo forms (780,000–400,000years) may not have been substantially taller (150–170cm) than earlier Homo (1.6Ma–800,000years), yet brain size exceeded 1000cm3 and body mass approached 80kg in some males. Later Pleistocene Homo (400,000–138,000years) were ‘massive’ in their height (160–190cm) and mass (70–90kg) and consistently exceed recent humans. Relative brain size exceeds earlier Homo, yet is substantially lower than in final glacial H. sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis. A final leap in absolute and relative brain size in Homo (300,000–138,000years) occurred independent of any observed increase in body mass and implies a different selective mediator to that operating on brain size increases observed in earlier Homo.