{"id":18287,"date":"2014-12-05T07:33:29","date_gmt":"2014-12-05T07:33:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/research\/did-the-human-ancestor-homo-erectus-doodle\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T16:04:26","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T10:34:26","slug":"did-the-human-ancestor-homo-erectus-doodle","status":"publish","type":"research","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/did-the-human-ancestor-homo-erectus-doodle","title":{"rendered":"Did the human ancestor Homo erectus doodle?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Josephine Joordens, a biologist at Leiden University, found a seashell to have a zigzag engraving\u2014a doodle\u2014that was made by <em>Homo erectus<\/em> half a million years ago. The shell, which had sand grains still embedded in it, was collected in the 1890s by the Dutch paleontologist Eug\u00e8ne Dubois at a site in eastern Java called Trinil.\u00a0While working a project on how\u00a0<em>H. erectus<\/em>\u00a0used marine resources, Joordens examined seashells and found some of them to have small perforations<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">\u2014<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">a few millimeters wide<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">\u2014<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">made with a sharp object. Closer observation revealed that the engraving was made intentionally by the maker to probably mark the shell as personal property or as art. The discovery of this doodle has raised speculations about <em>H. erectus<\/em> having abilities such as abstract thinking, which was attributed only to <em>Homo sapiens<\/em>. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Read more in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/homo-erectus-made-world-s-oldest-doodle-500-000-years-ago-1.16477\">Nature<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":33313,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"new_tags":[],"series":[],"subject":[5747,5745,5746],"class_list":["post-18287","research","type-research","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","subject-and-social-science","subject-arts","subject-humanities"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Did the human ancestor Homo erectus doodle? | Editage Insights<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Josephine Joordens, a biologist at Leiden University, found a seashell with a doodle that was made by Homo erectus half a million years ago. Read on to know how this\u00a0discovery has raised speculations about H. erectus having abilities such as abstract thinking, which was attributed only to Homo sapiens.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/did-the-human-ancestor-homo-erectus-doodle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Did the human ancestor Homo erectus doodle? | Editage Insights\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Josephine Joordens, a biologist at Leiden University, found a seashell with a doodle that was made by Homo erectus half a million years ago. 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