Homo rhodesiensis

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Homo rhodesiensis
Side view of Kabwe 1 (original)

Side view of Kabwe 1 (original)

Temporal occurrence
Pliocene
approx. 0.3 million years
Locations
Systematics
Human (Hominoidea)
Apes (Hominidae)
Homininae
Hominini
homo
Homo rhodesiensis
Scientific name
Homo rhodesiensis
Woodward , 1921

As Homo rhodesiensis is fossil skull Kabwe 1 (also: 1 Broken Hill) indicates that on June 17 in 1921 by Swiss miner Tom Zwiglaar in a zinc - and lead mine in Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe in Zambia is found). In the English-speaking world, the fossil is known as the Rhodesian man or Broken Hill Skull .

The very well preserved skull was - before the Taung child, discovered in 1924 - the first significant hominine fossil discovered in Africa . It was brought to England by the director of the mine, given to the British Museum and scientifically described by Arthur Smith Woodward in November 1921 . The skull is now in the Natural History Museum in London under archive number E686. The site in Zambia was destroyed as early as 1930 during mining work.

The validity of the species name Homo rhodesiensis is disputed among experts.

Naming

The name of the genus Homo is derived from the Latin hŏmō [ ˈhɔmoː ] "man". The epithet rhodesiensis is reminiscent of the place where the type specimen was found in the former Northern Rhodesia. Homo rhodesiensis thus means "Rhodesian man".

Find description

Kabwe 1, front view (copy)

The scope of the find, which was of great importance for the reconstruction of human tribal history , includes a second upper jaw, a left tibia , a right humerus , a fragment of a femur , a sacrum and other fragments of bones, in addition to the skull with a partially toothed upper jaw were also recovered in 1921 from probably the same soil layer as the skull.

The brain volume is 1280 cm³ and thus at the lower limit of the volume in anatomically modern humans, which in comparison with very old hominine skulls (which have a significantly smaller brain volume) also makes an older origin unlikely. Due to the distinctive bulge above the eye , the skull is attributed to a man.

In the first description , Smith Woodward wrote that on the one hand the skull was strangely similar to the Neanderthal finds from Belgium , France and Gibraltar due to the broad face and the bulge above the eyes , on the other hand the shape of the skull roof and the thickness of the skull bones were the same in theirs Dimensions and shapes are those of an average European . The position of the foramen magnum also deviates so much from that of the Neanderthal that it cannot be placed in the same position with it. According to Smith Woodward, the body bones also spoke against this, in which he saw - as with the foramen magnum - “typical modern features” for the upright gait . In 1921 the Neanderthals were considered to be a possible direct ancestor of the anatomically modern man ( Homo sapiens ), which is why Smith Woodward suspected that the Rhodesian could stand between this and the anatomically modern man.

Because of the heavily worn teeth of the find, it is believed “that this individual consumed very rough food. It could have been roots, tubers and grains. Otherwise, his diet was probably similar to that of Homo heidelbergensis, "whose diet consisted of at least 80 percent vegetable components.

The body height was estimated at about 1.75 meters, the body weight at 60 to 70 kg.

Dating

Dating the bones proved difficult as the site was destroyed long before reliable direct dating methods were established; For example, an early age determination , which has been considered faulty for some time, attributed the fossil to an age of 2.5 to 1.75 million years. Using electron spin resonance , it was determined that the upper limit of age is “closer to 300,000 than 500,000 years” and that the lower limit is “closer to 200,000 than 300,000 years”. Remnants of small mammals that were recovered with the hominine fossils resemble similar finds from other African excavations that are 300,000 to 200,000 years old. The Smithsonian Institution named the age on its website since 2016 as "between 300,000 and 125,000 years". A uranium-thorium dating published in 2020 finally narrowed the age down to 299,000 ± 25,000 years.

Taxonomic classification

Pedigree model that emphasizes the importance of H. heidelbergensis and H. rhodesiensis

Arthur Smith Woodward's 1921 assignment of the Kabwe 1 skull as a holotype to a new, separate species that he introduced is controversial. However, Smith Woodward had presumably classified the skull correctly in terms of its phylogenetic history, as he saw in it a close, possibly direct ancestor of today's humans. Because according to the currently prevailing opinion of experts, Kabwe 1 belongs to the group of archaic Homo sapiens , so that the name Homo sapiens rhodesiensis was also proposed. However, it was also suggested to place the finds called "archaic Homo sapiens " as an independent Chronospecies Homo rhodesiensis between the younger species Homo sapiens and the older species Homo erectus / Homo ergaster .

The skull shares various morphological features with the skulls Bodo 1 from Ethiopia and Petralona 1 from Greece as well as with the Arago fossils from southern France and the skull roof Saldanha 1 from South Africa . Parts of US paleoanthropology therefore place Kabwe 1 as Homo heidelbergensis .

See also

literature

  • Matt Cartmill, Fred H. Smith: The Human Lineage. Chapter 6. Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken 2009, ISBN 978-0-471-21491-5 .
  • Homo rhodesiensis Woodward, 1921. In: W. Eric Meikle, Sue Taylor Parker: Naming our Ancestors. An Anthology of Hominid Taxonomy. Waveland Press, Prospect Heights (Illinois) 1994, ISBN 0-88133-799-4 , p. 47.

Web links

Commons : Homo rhodesiensis  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Arthur Smith Woodward : A New Cave Man from Rhodesia, South Africa. In: Nature . Volume 108, 1921, pp. 371-372, doi: 10.1038 / 108371a0 . Reprinted in: W. Eric Meikle, Sue Taylor Parker: Naming our Ancestors. An Anthology of Hominid Taxonomy. Waveland Press, Prospect Heights (Illinois) 1994, ISBN 0-88133-799-4 , pp. 48-51. -
  2. ↑ a b Smithsonian Institution: Kabwe 1. As of March 30, 2016
  3. ↑ Chris Stringer : The Origin of Our Species. Penguin / Allen Lane, 2011, ISBN 978-1-84614-140-9 , p. 248.
  4. ^ Entry Kabwe 1 in: Bernard Wood : Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Human Evolution. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4051-5510-6 .
  5. ^ G. Philip Rightmire: Brain size and encephalization in early to Mid ‐ Pleistocene Homo. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 124, No. 2, 2004, pp. 109-123, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.10346
  6. ↑ Gary J. Sawyer, Viktor Deak: The Long Way to Man. Life pictures from 7 million years of evolution. Spectrum, Heidelberg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8274-1915-6 , p. 147.
  7. ↑ GJ Sawyer, Viktor Deak: The long way to people. P. 153.
  8. ↑ Thorolf Hardt, Bernd Herkner and Ulrike Menz: Safari to the primitive man. Schweizerbart'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 2009, p. 127, ISBN 978-3-510-61395-3
  9. ↑ Chris Stringer, The Origin of Our Species , 2011, p. 252.
  10. ^ D. Margaret Avery: Taphonomy of Micromammals from Cave Deposits at Kabwe (Broken Hill) and Twin Rivers in Central Zambia. In: Journal of Archaeological Science. Volume 29, No. 5, 2002, pp. 537-544, doi: 10.1006 / jasc.2001.0749
  11. ^ Rainer Grün et al .: Dating the skull from Broken Hill, Zambia, and its position in human evolution. In: Nature. Volume 580, 2020, pp. 372-375, doi: 10.1038 / s41586-020-2165-4 .
  12. ^ Ian Tattersall : The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack - and Other Cautionary Tales from Human Evolution. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2015, p. 186, ISBN 978-1-137-27889-0
  13. ↑ Australian Museum: Homo heidelbergensis' important specimens - 'Kabwe' or 'Broken Hill 1'. On: australianmuseum.net.au , as of April 5, 2019