Hofmeyr skull
The Hofmeyr skull is the almost completely preserved fossil of the skull bones of a fully grown modern human (Homo sapiens) . He was found in 1952 near Hofmeyr in the South African province of Eastern Cape . The skull was in the dry river bed of the Vlekpoort River ( 31 ° 34 ' S , 25 ° 58' O come to light), other skeletal remains or archaeological artifacts are not known from this place. The exact site is no longer accessible today because it is under siltdisappeared after a weir was built downstream. The importance of the skull for human tribal history was only recognized more than 50 years after its discovery. At this point, however, several parts of the skull had already been lost.
A piece of the parietal bone had already been removed in the 1960s - presumably to date the find - but no age determination was published. It was not until the beginning of 2007 that an international research group published a study that dated the Hofmeyr skull to an age of around 36,000 ± 3,000 years. Using a new dating method developed by team member Richard Bailey and his colleagues at the University of Oxford , the researchers examined how much ionizing radiation had been absorbed by the grains of sand that filled the skull, and deduced the age from this.
The recent study of the Hofmeyr skull rendered at the same time important insights into the morphology of the Upper Paleolithic ( Later Stone Age -) population of Homo sapiens in southern Africa. According to the study, the skull is very similar to skulls from Europe of about the same age. But it is very different from the skulls of sub-Saharan Africans living today , including the Khoisan ; it also differs from all known, more recent archaeological skulls from the region. The researchers interpret this special position as an independent confirmation of those genetic studies on the spread of humans , which indicate that modern humans from sub-Saharan Africa colonized the Old World around 40,000 years ago ( out-of-Africa theory ). “The ancestors of all people living today come from this population,” team leader Frederick E. Grine was quoted as saying in a press release from the Max Planck Society .
Due to the dating, the find also closed a gap in the fossils found in sub-Saharan Africa that are assigned to Homo sapiens . Previously, only finds were known that are either around 70,000 or only around 15,000 years old.
See also
Web links
- Through the back door. Homo sapiens reached Europe via Russia. On: Spektrum.de from January 11, 2007
Individual evidence
- ^ FE Grine et al .: Late Pleistocene Human Skull from Hofmeyr, South Africa and Modern Human Origins . In: Science . Volume 315, 2007, pp. 226-229; doi : 10.1126 / science.1136294
- ↑ literally it says in Science : "an overall picture of morphological modernity"
- ↑ Hofmeyr skull supports 'Out of Africa' theory. On: mpg.de from January 12, 2007