Imagine that you have used a time maching to travel back to East Africa 2 million years ago.?

Question

Imagine that you have used a time maching to travel back to East Africa 2 million years ago. Describe what you would see. What would the habitat be like? What kinds of hominins would you see? What would they look like? What would they be doing? Would there be more than one type of hominin around? If so, how would they differ?

Answer 1

There were likely several different types.  One type were the robust australopithecines that had small brains and were probably not technological at all.  It is likely that multiple species of hominins closer to humans existed but it would be very difficult to assign technology or make assumptions to how they lived.  We know that erectus and and at least one of the habilis lived side by side about 400,000 years later so it is very likely that several distinct populations existed.  At least one of them was using stone tools.  The most successful were probably starting out as primitive hunter gatherers  and others were forced to stay out of the way and forage for whatever they could find like chimpanzees.  They were probably widespread by that time because they were found in Asia shortly after that.