Luckily for us, one did—a group of tool users, which seemed to arise from out of nowhere and overlapped with the shadowy and much disputed Homo habilis. This is Homo erectus, the species discovered by Eugene Dubois in Java in 1891. Depending on which sources you consult, it existed from about 1.8 million years ago to possibly as recently as twenty thousand or so years ago.

According to the Java Man authors, Homo erectus is the dividing line: everything that came before him was apelike in character; everything that came after was humanlike. Homo erectus was the first to hunt, the first to use fire, the first to fashion complex tools, the first to leave evidence of campsites, the first to look after the weak and frail. Compared with all that had gone before, Homo erectus was extremely human in form as well as behavior, its members long-limbed and lean, very strong (much stronger than modern humans), and with the drive and intelligence to spread successfully over huge areas. To other hominids, Homo erectus must have seemed terrifyingly powerful, fleet, and gifted.