PG, I think the time frame of 700,000 years ago is long removed from later, advanced civilisations, perhaps more in the 400,000 to 250,000 time frame. For me the interesting thing was this group of homo-erectus hunted as a group and brought down a mega-sized rhinocerous, showing they had teamwork, tools, and skillsets. A lot of the narrative we have currently is guesswork, unless it is pure channelling which I think is a good source of information. We are lucky to have access to so many channels, but there is quite a bit of discernment required to find out which are the pure sources. In any case, in one of the previous "root races" (as termed in Theosophy) the civilisation and thus man reached a high level, but at some point due to their creation of chimeras and mucking around with DNA hybridisation, and due to our succumbing to the veiled agendas of dominant alien races, we suffered a "fall" where strands of DNA were sidelined (I believe blocked, but not removed).
What I find interesting is that what we were spoon fed as children and young adults (for me, about 1965-1985) was that civilisation didn't go back beyond 5,000 years (i.e. 3,000BC). We were told the entire Australian Aboriginal existence didn't go back further than 20,000 years. Now it is common knowledge among scientists that modern humans reach back at least 50,000 years, and it is accepted that Australian Aborigines have been present in their current tribal lands for 40,000 - 70,000 years.
I am looking forward to a lot more revelations in the near future about the status of finds that have been "shelved", because of the effect it would have on the spoon-fed paradigm. Soon, the majority of people are going to shout to the rafters: "Tell us! We have a right to know what you know! We won't stand for being cannon-fodder any longer! Our remit on this Earth is more gracious, more expansive, more galactic than that!"