His name, which means “skilled man”, was given to him in 1964 because this species was thought to represent the first manufacturer of stone tools. Today, the oldest stone tools are dated slightly older than the oldest evidence of the genus Homo. Homo habilis, which literally translates to “skilled man”, is the oldest known member of the human race. They lived between 2.8 and 1.5 million years ago, were omnivorous, social and inhabited large areas of sub-Saharan Africa.
When they were first discovered in the 1960s, they differed from other primitive hominids by a series of very human characteristics. These included larger brains, arched feet, smaller teeth and hand bones, suggesting that they could manipulate objects with precision. The skilled man, also known as Homo habilis, is a species of the Hominini tribe, native to the meadows, savannas and scrub of Africa. It looks like a cross between a chimpanzee and an ordinary human, and is more omnivorous than chimpanzees.
They are very ingenious and adapt to many changes in their natural habitats, and they can also adapt very well to life in cities. They are very social animals and can take advantage of this advantage to ward off predators, such as lions, so they don't kill and steal them. They are also the most abundant of the primitive hominids, with populations of around 1.2 billion in Africa alone, and are increasing due to the abundance of food in cities manufactured by ordinary humans. In fact, it is impossible to say with certainty whether skilled men used tools or not, since several species of primitive hominids coexisted in the same place and at the same time.
Habilis are thought to have had a thick covering of body hair like modern non-human apes because they appear to have inhabited colder regions and are thought to have had a less active lifestyle than posergaster (presumably hairless) species. Two of the skulls are very similar to Homo ergaster, but one seems to have intermediate features between Homo habilis and Homo ergaster and may represent a link between these two species. This species is known as “skilled man” because stone tools were found near its fossil remains and it is assumed that this species had developed the ability to transform stone into tools. However, it is likely that specific shapes have not been thought of beforehand, and this is probably due to the lack of standardization in the production of these tools, as well as in the types of raw materials of the that the cutters have.
Although it is now widely accepted that Homo evolved from Australopithecus, the timing and location of this division have been much debated, and it has been proposed that many Australopithecus species are the ancestor. Habilis, manufactured and used the first stone tools found in the archaeological record, which also date back to about 2.6 million years ago; however, this hypothesis is difficult to prove because several other species of primitive humans lived at the same time and in the same geographical area, where traces of the oldest use of tools have been found. This intersection also calls into question the idea of a linear evolutionary progression in which later species sequentially approach modern humans. Habilis were flexible and versatile and could eat a wide variety of foods, including harder foods, such as leaves, woody plants and some animal tissues, but they did not usually consume hard foods, such as nuts or brittle seeds, dried meat or very hard tubers, nor did they specialize in them.
This species had a cranial capacity ranging from 500 to 800 cm3, a brain size that varied from that of Australopithecus to primitive Homo erectus. Because this primitive human had a combination of characteristics different from those of Australopithecus, Louis Leakey, the South African scientist Philip Tobias and the British scientist John Napier declared that these fossils were a new species and called them Homo habilis (meaning “skilled man”), because they suspected that it was this primitive human with a slightly larger brain that manufactured the thousands of stone tools that are also found in the Olduvai Gorge.
