Homo erectus at Engaji Nanyori adapted to extreme climatic conditions
The CENIEH has participated in an international project at Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania) centered on this species which thrived in hyperarid environments in East Africa around one million years ago, evincing much greater ecological flexibility than was believed.
Raquel Hernando, a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral researcher at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), and associated with the ERC AdG Tied2Teeth project, is a member of an international team led by Prof. Julio Mercader, of the University of Calgary (Canada), which has published a paper in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment on the species Homo erectus, which challenges our preconceptions of the adaptability of the earliest hominins.
This paper reports the results of new work carried out recently at the Engaji Nanyori site in Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania), five decades after the discovery of H. erectus there, which reveals that this species prospered in the hyperarid environments of East Africa around one million years ago, demonstrating much greater ecological flexibility than was believed.
“The data obtained at Engaji Nanyori are key to understanding how H. erectus managed resources in arid environments, displaying an adaptive flexibility that was the hallmark of the success of their dispersion”,
says Hernando, who coordinated the excavation work at this Tanzanian site, which yielded the faunal and industry assemblages essential to reconstructing the subsistence and ecological dynamics of these hominins.
The research performed used an interdisciplinary approach which included techniques such as biogeochemical and molecular analyses, paleobotanical studies and archaeological analyses, which portray an ecosystem dominated by semidesert scrub, in which H. erectus repeatedly occupied fluvial landscapes to gain access to water and other crucial resources, and adapting to extreme conditions long before the advent of our own species, H. sapiens.
An international undertaking
This project led by Mercader at Olduvai brings to bear a variety of disciplines, including archaeology, paleoanthropology, museology, social and environmental sciences, geosciences, biology and conservation. Thanks to this multi-pronged attack, an integrated evaluation of the ancient environments and ecosystems was performed, which also looked at the diet and subsistence strategies of H. erectus, giving us a unified view of its capacity for adaptation to extreme environments.
Crucial to this investigation was international collaboration among researchers from 22 institutions in different countries, together with the invaluable participation of the Masai community at Olduvai Gorge, and it was made possible by funding from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) through its Partnership Grant scheme.
Press release from the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana – CENIEH
Evolution: Early humans adapted to extreme desert conditions over one million years ago
Homo erectus was able to adapt to and survive in desert-like environments at least 1.2 million years ago, according to a paper published in Communications Earth & Environment. The findings suggest that behavioural adaptations included returning repeatedly over thousands of years to specific rivers and ponds for fresh water, and the development of specialised tools. The authors propose that this capability to adapt may have led to the expansion of H. erectus’ geographic range.
There has been significant debate over when early hominins acquired the adaptability to survive in extreme environments, such as deserts or rainforests. Previous research has frequently concluded that only Homo sapiens were able to adapt to such environments.
Julio Mercader, Paul Durkin, and colleagues collected archaeological, geological, and palaeoclimatic data at Engaji Nanyori in Oldupai Gorge, Tanzania — a key early hominin archaeological site. The authors report that between approximately 1.2 million and 1 million years ago, semi-desert conditions persisted in the area with characteristic plant life evident. The archaeological data suggests that groups of H. erectus in the area adapted to the conditions over the period by repeatedly returning to live in locations with freshwater availability such as ponds, and developing specialised stone tools such as scrapers and notched tools (known as denticulates), which the authors suggest were probably used to increase the efficiency of butchery.
The authors suggest that, together, these findings demonstrate that H. erectus had a much greater adaptability to survive in extreme environments than was previously thought. The authors conclude that their results contradict previous hypotheses that only H. sapiens could adapt to extreme ecosystems, and that H. erectus may have been a generalist species able to survive in a variety of landscapes in Africa and Eurasia.

Bibliographic information:
Mercader, J., Akuku, P., Boivin, N. et al. Homo erectus adapted to steppe-desert climate extremes one million years ago, Commun Earth Environ 6, 1 (2025), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01919-1
Press release from Springer.