Hofmeyr: A Summary Perspective on the Context and Morphology of a Late Pleistocene Human Skull from South Africa

Abstract

There is a seeming consensus among geneticists and paleontologists that Homo sapiens emerged in Africa during the Middle Pleistocene, with most genetic studies indicating that the deepest human lineages can be identified among the indigenous populations of southern Africa. The African fossil record is very spotty from MIS 7 through MIS 4, with a slight improvement in MIS 3. MIS 3 is of significance for our understanding of human evolution in Africa. This was a period of extreme climatic variability over most of South Africa, and this was accompanied by greater lithic variability in the archaeological record with the transition from the Middle to the Later Stone Age. Among the human fossils from MIS 3 is the partial skull from Hofmeyr, South Africa. The contributions that comprise the present volume reveal the tremendous amount of information that has been painstakingly extracted from this specimen. These chapters serve to place the Hofmeyr skull in the context of Late Pleistocene human evolution.