FRANCE: Early humans living in Africa almost two million years ago came in a range of shapes and sizes just as people do today, evidence suggests.
Some were distinctly vertically challenged, measuring around 1.5 metres, while others would have held their heads high in the modern world.
Another possibility, thought to be less likely, is that there were numerous species belonging to the human family Homo that varied in appearance.
Researcher Jay Stock, from Cambridge University’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, said: “If someone asked you ‘are modern humans six-foot tall and 70kg?’ you’d say ‘well, some are, but many people aren’t’, and what we’re starting to show is that this diversification happened really early in human evolution.”
The study is the first in 20 years to compare the body size of humans who shared the earth with mammoths and sabre-toothed cats between 1.5 million and 2.5 million years ago.
Measurements of fossils from sites in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, and Georgia in eastern Europe, revealed significant regional variation in the size of early humans during the last Ice Age.
