Figure 3. Hominids now known as Homo erectus  were found on Java, Indonesia, in 1891, and at Zhoukoudian, near Beijing, in the 1930s. As Homo erectus  was clearly more primitive than hominid fossils known in Europe, human beings were initially thought to have emerged in East Asia and dispersed westward. Since the early 1960s, numerous fossils from African localities in the eastern Rift Valley, Lake Malawi and South Africa have demonstrated an African emergence for Homo . In the 1990s, advances in dating methods and new finds at Dmanisi (Georgia), Riwat (Pakistan), two Javanese sites and Longgupo (China) show that early Homo  had arrived in East Asia by 2 million years ago. Areas in pale blue indicate land masses submerged since those early dispersions. (Illustration by Joe LeMonnier)