Homo erectus, or 'upright man', is an extinct species of human that occupies an intriguing spot within the human evolutionary lineage. These prehistoric hunter-gatherers were highly successful in adapting to vastly different habitats across the Old World, as fossils connected with this species have been found ranging from Africa all the way to Southeast Asia. With the first remains appearing around 1,9 million years ago, and the latest ones surviving into the Middle Pleistocene, Homo erectus spanned an extraordinarily large time frame. However, the amount of variation between different fossils from different times and places has raised a lot of questions regarding the actual classification of the species, and its exact role in the evolutionary story.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original content at https://www.worldhistory.org/Homo_Erectus/.