Talk:Homo ergaster
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I've left the sentence "Homo ergaster developed the more sophisticated hand-axe." in the article, but it's not clear--more sophisticated than what? Vicki Rosenzweig
Should we retranslate "ergaster" as just "worker"? "Workman man" sounds redundant.
[edit] larger brain?
Didn't homo erectus have a larger brain? This site, for example(http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html#ergaster) says that H. erectus has a larger brain, while others give a range from ~850-1200cc, larger than 800cc in any case.
[edit] Hair/No-Hair, Skin, Sweat?
While I feel it's important to use our imaginations when trying to interpret what we've found, it seems to be a habit lately to take logical supposition and begin giving it as known fact. For instance, it's reasonable to wonder why Ergaster was so radically different from Habilis and Rudolphensis, the only two previous specimens known. It's not so reasonable to clearly state that some of the greatest differences were that Ergaster was hairless and dark-skinned, whereas Habilis was not. We have no evidence regarding this, and only have our own logic based on fossil finds and what we believe about the environment of the time.
Just as we once assumed that bipedalism only arose with Australopithecenes (and find that it existed quite further back, even if not as a standard means of locomotion), it's folly to assume that hairlessness was either a short process or one that occurred at the most convenient time. It's a valid argument that a lack of hair goes much further back in our line, just as it's easy to believe that loss of a noticable hair coat arose with more modern African populations.
Moreover, considering the wide variations in hairyness among modern populations (from the smooth and hairless to men who have built-in sweaters), it is doubtful that a wide-ranging population in varying environments could be defined under anything but an average hair covering.
It's nitpicking, but it's bad science to not seperate hypothetical reasoning and strongly derrived theory.
