Illustration of a Homo erectus woman making a fire by rubbing a stick on a bark. Homo erectus lived between 1.9 million years ago and 143,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch. It is one of several extinct hominins in the evolutionary tree that led to modern humans. Fossils of Homo erectus have been found in Africa and in Eurasia in places ranging from Georgia to Armenia, India, China and Indonesia.