Difference Between Homo Sapiens and Homo Erectus

Homo Sapiens vs Homo Erectus
 

Homo sapiens and Homo erectus are the modern man and one of the extinct species of man-like or hominids respectively. There are many differences between them, which would be interesting to know for anyone. Although we have heard of those terms before, the actual distinctions may have been a little difficult to understand, but a simplified account with some scientific sense, like this article, would cover a larger audience. The general information or characteristics of both man and erectus are discussed and then a fair comparison is made about the two species.

Homo Sapiens

It is the scientifically referred name for the modern man, and the two names together means the man who thinks or the wise man. The human is one of the most distinguished species of the entire animal kingdom. They perform highly complex activities and solve serious matters or problems using the exceptionally large brain compared to the body size. It has been a widely accepted fact that the human’s primary weapon is the brain, or in other words, the intelligence of man could never be beaten by any of the forces in the universe. The highly complex and developed brain of the humans has the ability to theorize languages, justifications, problem solving, and many more functions. Humans are distributed all over the world including the ice-cold snowed lands all around the year, but not in Antarctica. They are culturally different among nations as well as within nations and countries. Mainly, there are three morphological types of humans known as Mongoloid, Caucasoid, and Negroid. However, the number of differences among human individuals is countless, because all the human individuals are extremely different from each other in their external appearance as well as from their thoughts. Nevertheless, the physiology has no much difference from the related species. Usually a healthy average adult human weighs about 50 – 80 kilograms while the height could vary from 1.5 to 1.8 metres. Despite the fact that humans are the most sophisticated species ever known to live on the Earth, the ability to stand out any major disaster or a climatic or geographic shift is unknown, but other animals have proven their abilities in such occasions.

Homo Erectus

Homo erectus was one of the hominid species, which is now extinct from the world. They were the first to stand in a standard upright posture out of all the hominids, and that has given their species name erectus. According to the fossil evidences, they lived until 1.3 million years from today and the earliest Homo erectus fossil dates back to 1.8 million years. Until recent findings about the fossils of Homo habilis, it was believed that H. erectus descended into H. neanderthalensis. However, now the scientists state that both these species lived together for at least 500,000 years. H. erectus was the first to move out from Africa, and they have gone into many places of the world as their fossils from different regions of the world suggest. They were highly intelligent creatures, and it is envisaged as some had cranial capacities differing between 850 and 1,100 cubic centimetres. The face profile was not much protruded like in Australopithecus, and erectus man was averagely 5 feet and 10 inches tall. Additionally, the females were considerably smaller than males (by 25%). There are evidences to suggest that they used fire and tools in easing their functions. Furthermore, they have used rafts to cross water bodies that measure up to even oceans.