Lower Paleolithic - Calabrian

Calabrian

Homo erectus moved from scavenging to hunting, developing the hunting-gathering lifestyle that would remain dominant throughout the Paleolithic into the Mesolithic. The unlocking of the new niche of hunting-gathering subsistence drove a number of further changes, behavioral and physiological, leading to the appearance of Homo heidelbergensis by some 600,000 years ago.

Homo erectus migrated out of Africa and dispersed throughout Eurasia. Stone tools in Malaysia have been dated to be 1.83 million years old. The Peking Man fossil, discovered in 1929, is roughly 700,000 years old.

In Europe, the Olduwan tradition (known in Europe as Abbevillian) split into two parallel traditions, the Clactonian, a flake tradition, and the Acheulean, a hand-axe tradition. The Levallois technique for knapping flint developed during this time.

The carrier species from Africa to Europe undoubtedly was Homo erectus. This type of human is more clearly linked to the flake tradition, which spread across southern Europe through the Balkans to appear relatively densely in southeast Asia. Many Mousterian finds in the Middle Paleolithic have been knapped using a Levallois technique, suggesting that Neanderthals evolved from Homo erectus (but, perhaps, Homo heidelbergensis (see below)).

At the site of Monte Poggiolo, near Forlì, in Italy, thousands of stone handaxes have been found that date from 800,000 years ago.