Several years ago, a team of scientists from the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, set out to put a human face to ancient hominid species that once walked the Earth. Using sophisticated forensic methods, they created 27 model heads based on bone fragments, teeth and skulls found across the globe over the last century. The meticulously sculpted heads are the anthropological products of years of excavation in Africa, Asia, and Europe.
In the last 8 million years, at least a dozen human-like species have lived on Earth. As part of the Safari zum Urmenschen exhibition (“Safari of Early Humans”), the facial reconstructions take us on a journey through time, going back seven million years to the species sahelanthropus tchadensis, and culminating with modern-day Homo sapiens. Each face tells its own story about the lives of hominids in their respective era, including where they lived, what they ate, and their likely cause of death.
The exhibition drew much controversy when it was first launched, mainly due to scholarly debates that have raged for decades regarding the classification of these ancient species. Fossils are extremely challenging to categorise as one species or another. Only a few thousand fossils of pre-human species have ever been discovered and entire sub-species are sometimes known only from a single jaw or fragmentary skull. Furthermore, like modern-day humans, no two hominids were alike and it is difficult to determine whether variations in skull features represent distinct species or variations within the same species. For example, the recent discovery of a skull in Dmansi in Turkey suggested that a number of contemporary species of early “Homo” – Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo ergaster, and Homo erectus – are actually just variations of one species.
Bones can only say so much, and experts are forced to make educated guesses to fill in the gaps in an ancient hominid family tree that extends back 8 million years. With each new discovery, paleoanthropologists have to rewrite the origins of mankind’s ancestors, adding on new branches and tracking when species split, and rather than providing answers regarding our ancient past, many discoveries simply lead to more questions.
Here are a few:
This model is of an adult male of the species Homo rudolfensis, reconstructed from 1.8-million-year-old bone fragments found in Koobi Fora, Kenya, in 1972. He used stone tools and ate meat and plants. Homo rudolfensis lived from 1.9 to 1.7 million years ago and had a larger cranial capacity than his contemporaries, ranging from 530 to 750cc. They had distinctive features including a flatter, broader face and broader post-canine teeth, with more complex crowns and roots.
Finding ‘Turkana Boy’ was one of the most spectacular discoveries in palaeoanthropology. His reconstruction came from the almost perfectly preserved skeleton found in 1984 at Nariokotome near Lake Turkana in Kenya. It is the most complete early human skeleton ever found. Turkana Boy is believed to have been somewhere between 7 and 15 years of age and lived 1.6 million years ago. According to research, the boy died beside a shallow river delta, where he was covered by alluvial sediments. Homo ergaster lived between 1.8 and 1.3 million years ago and had a cranial capacity of 700 to 900 cc. Remains have been found in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa.
‘Miguelon’ is the name given to the remains of an adult male belonging to the Homo heidelbergensis group, discovered in Sima de los Huesos (“the pit of bones”), Spain, in 1993. More than 5,500 human fossils of this species, which are considered to be the direct ancestor of Neanderthals, have been found in the Sima de los Huesos site. Miguelon, which is the nickname of “Atapuerca 5”, is the most complete skull of a Homo heidelbergensis ever found. Miguelon is a thirty-year-old male who died around 400,000 years ago. His skull showed evidence of 13 separate impacts and he died of septicaemia resulting from broken teeth – a tooth had been broken in half by a strong blow, so that the flesh had been exposed and led to an infectious process that continued until nearly the orbital bone. The model, shown here, does not include the deformity. Homo heidelbergensis lived between 1.3 million and 200,000 years ago. Their cranial volume of 1100 to 1400 cc overlaps the 1350 cc average of modern humans. Fossils of this species have been found in Spain, Italy, France and Greece.
‘Miguelon’ is the name given to the remains of an adult male belonging to the Homo heidelbergensis group, discovered in Sima de los Huesos (“the pit of bones”), Spain, in 1993. More than 5,500 human fossils of this species, which are considered to be the direct ancestor of Neanderthals, have been found in the Sima de los Huesos site. Miguelon, which is the nickname of “Atapuerca 5”, is the most complete skull of a Homo heidelbergensis ever found. Miguelon is a thirty-year-old male who died around 400,000 years ago. His skull showed evidence of 13 separate impacts and he died of septicaemia resulting from broken teeth – a tooth had been broken in half by a strong blow, so that the flesh had been exposed and led to an infectious process that continued until nearly the orbital bone. The model, shown here, does not include the deformity. Homo heidelbergensis lived between 1.3 million and 200,000 years ago. Their cranial volume of 1100 to 1400 cc overlaps the 1350 cc average of modern humans. Fossils of this species have been found in Spain, Italy, France and Greece.
“The hobbit” is the name given to the female remains of hominid species known as Homo floresiensis, found in Liang Bua, Flores, Indonesia, in 2003. Name after her small stature, she was about 1 meter tall (about 3’3″) and lived about 18,000 years ago. Partial skeletons of nine other individuals have now been recovered, and these have been the subject of intense research to determine whether they represent a species distinct from modern humans – it is now believed they do. This hominid is remarkable for its small body and brain (420 cc) and for its survival until relatively recent times (possibly as recently as 12,000 years ago)
