Fossil Human Skulls Research Articles

Late Pleistocene archaic human crania from Xuchang, China.

Two early Late Pleistocene (~105,000- to 125,000-year-old) crania from Lingjing, Xuchang, China, exhibit a morphological mosaic with differences from and similarities to their western contemporaries. They share pan-Old World trends in encephalization and in supraorbital, neurocranial vault, and nuchal gracilization. They reflect eastern Eurasian ancestry in having low, sagittally flat, and inferiorly broad neurocrania. They share occipital (suprainiac and nuchal torus) and temporal labyrinthine (semicircular canal) morphology with the Neandertals. This morphological combination reflects Pleistocene human evolutionary patterns in general biology, as well as both regional continuity and interregional population dynamics.

Orbital dynamics, environmental heterogeneity, and the evolution of the human brain

Many explanations have been proposed for the evolution of our anomalously large brains, including social, ecological, and epiphenomenal hypotheses. Recently, an additional hypothesis has emerged, suggesting that advanced cognition and, by inference, increases in brain size, have been driven over evolutionary time by the need to deal with environmental complexity. The essential logic is that orbital variables have affected the quantity of solar energy reaching the earth, thus creating climatic changes that posed adaptive challenges to ancestral humans. Larger-brained humans were better equipped to deal with such changes, and proliferated accordingly, leading to the observed trajectory of increasing brain size. Though cross-citation remains rare, researchers from areas as apparently disparate as philosophy and botany are ultimately reaching similar conclusions. In order to test the validity of hypotheses linking encephalisation to climatic variability in the human lineage, the endocranial volumes of 180 fossil human skulls spanning the last 3.2million years were collated from the literature and regressed upon a series of palaeoclimatic variables, including the amplitudes of the orbitally induced eccentricity, obliquity, and precession cycles. Multiple regression analyses demonstrate that the minimum amplitude of the eccentricity cycle explains 43% of the variance in endocranial capacity, with two further climatic variables accounting for a further 16%. These results are discussed in relation to the increasing weight of evidence that suggests that climatic instability may have played a significant part in the evolution of advanced cognition in both humans and other animals.

Fake! Part I

Fake! Part I

Age of the fossil Dali Man in north-central China deduced from chronostratigraphy of the loess–paleosol sequence

Dali Man, an archaic type of early Homo sapiens, is of great significance to the origin of Homo sapiens. Achievements have been made during the past decades in the understanding of the fossil human skull as well as the accompanying mammalian fossils and stone artifacts. However, the absolute age of the fossil Dali Man still remains unclear. Based on the magnetic susceptibility of loess sediments and the relationship of terracing process with climatic condition, we correlated the loess sequence and the subjacent terrace alluvium at the Dali Man site with the well-studied loess–paleosol sequence at Luochuan in the central part of the Chinese Loess Plateau. The correlation indicates that the loess–paleosol sequence at the Dali Man site extends down to the paleosol S2, and the underlying fluvial deposits correspond to the loess L3. Because the Dali Man skull appears in the basal gravel layer of the terrace, and because the deposition of the terrace gravels would occur during the transition from S3 paleosol formation to L3 loess accumulation, the age of the fossil Dali Man is inferred to be ca 270 ka, which is equivalent to the age of the boundary between the loess L3 and paleosol S3 on the magnetic susceptibility time series of the Luochuan loess–paleosol sequence.

Minatogawa Hominid Fossils and the Evolution of Late Pleistocene Humans in East Asia.

In order to understand the origins of Japanese people, this paper deals with the skull morphology of Late Pleistocene human fossils in Eastern Asia. After the Minatogawa 1 skull, the most complete Japanese Pleistocene fossil human skull now available, is described, a functional interpretation of the evidence is presented. The Minatogawa 1 skull exhibits many archaic features, which mainly relate to masticatory adaptation. When the Minatogawa 1 skull is compared with other fossil human skulls in East and Southeast Asia, it is found to exhibit morphological features slightly closer to the Wadjak 1 skull in Java than to the Zhoukoudian Upper Cave and Liujiang skulls in China. This suggests that there were no major human migrations between China and Japanese Islands in Late Pleistocene.

The Eyasi Skull

THE June 1946 issue of the Journal of the East Africa Natural History society contains two articles, one by Dr. L. S. B. Leakey entitled "Report on a visit to the site of the Eyasi skull found by Kohl-Larsen", and the other by W. H. Reeve on "A geological report on the site of Dr. Kohl-Larsen's discovery of a fossil human skull, Lake Eyasi, TangaVyika Territory". In the course of an expedition to the region of Lake Eyasi in Tanganyika Territory during 1934–36, Dr. Kohl-Larsen discovered there parts of three human skulls, together with some artefacts and fossil mammalian remains. The actual site is situated on the flats bordering the lake; and is approximately at the level to which the water rises during the wet seasons. The fossil human skull came from the so-called bone bed, a deposit of slightly consolidated sand. As the Eyasi deposits;have not been disturbed, they must be subsequent to the earth movements which immediately followed the Middle Pleistocene in those regions. There seems, however, no reason, either on archaeological or geological grounds, to question their late Pleistocene age, a date assigned to them by Dr. Kohl-Larsen. It may be added that the Eyasi strata contain minerals often found in Olduvai Bed 5, which also belongs to the sama period.

Dr. W. K. Gregory

DB. W. K. GREGORY has recently retired under an age limit from the staff of the American Museum of Natural History. For some forty years he occupied a very special place in that great institution, for his knowledge of comparative anatomy extended over the whole range of vertebrates, both recent and fossil, and his philosophical mind led him to make wide ranging comparisons and detailed analyses of structure which have contributed very greatly to our understanding of structure and especially of the course of evolutionary processes. His early works on Tritubucular teeth and on the orders of mammals were of great importance, and were but the harbingers of many others which have since appeared. During the past twenty years his immense experience of mammalian structure has enabled him to contribute much to our understanding of the significance of the many fossil human skulls which have become known, and he has at the same time devoted much attention to the detailed structure of modern fish. But Dr. Gregory's retirement is only from his formal position; relieved of administration he may, we hope, continue even more actively his own researches.

Evolution of Modern Man (Homo sapiens)

THE discovery of a fossil human skull near Keilor, an outer suburb of Melbourne, is a matter of high importance to students of human evolution, who will certainly welcome Dr. Zeuner's1 confirmation of the great antiquity attributed to it by Mr. D. J. Mahony, namely, that it represents a native Australian of the last (Riss–Wurm) interglacial period. In seeking for the homeland of this ancient representative of Homo sapiens, neither Dr. Zeuner nor Dr. Wunderly, who was entrusted with the description of the skull, allude to the most probable source of the aboriginal population of Australia, namely, the early pleistocene races of Java, typified by Pithecanthropus erectus.

Human Genera and Species

PROF. OSMAN HILL'S suggestion1 that the classification of the Hominidae is in urgent need of revision is likely to meet with general agreement. It is doubtful, however, if the particular proposals which he puts forward will do more than deliver the question from its present confusion—a confusion which at least has the merit of attributing a glamorous if unreal diversity to human ancestry—into another confusion at least as great. This is certain to occur if the principles of zoological classification are as he defines them. The differences which he suggests indicate generic distinctions (“differences in external or internal structure”) cannot be regarded as essentially different from those which he believes to indicate specific distinctions (“differences in bodily proportions differences in bodily form”, etc.). For, quite apart from the verbal and logistic difficulty of deciding what is a difference in “structure” and what is a difference in “form”, there is strong reason for supposing that pronounced differences in the one or the other or both aspects of the body or its organs are often simply due to differences in growth-rates. For example, some monkeys have a vermiform appendix, others lack this structure. Osman Hill's criteria suggest that differences of this kind are necessarily a sign of generic distinction. The difference, however, is entirely dependent on a different pattern and rate of growth in the caecal region of the large intestine, that is, on a process which in this case leads to an extreme difference in bodily proportions. These, however, Osman Hill regards as indicative of specific and not generic distinction. It would therefore seem that no real difference separates his criteria for denning genera and species. In any event it is difficult to see how they could be applied to fragments of fossil human skulls.

A Fossil Skull of an Ancestral Bushman from the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan

It is now recognized that during the Pleistocene, or even duringa later prehistoric period, there were in northern Africa human races related to the existing Bushmen and the Hottentots of the south. The shape of the skull in some of the early Egyptians, indeed, suggests relationship to the Bushmen. The discovery in the Anglo- Egyptian Sudan of a new type of fossil human skull with several resemblances to that of a Bushman, is therefore of great interest. The specimen was found in February 1924 by Mr W. R. G. Bond, who was then Governor of the Fung Province of the Anglo-Egyptia Sudan. It was embedded in a limestone concretion, which lay a few feet above low-stage river level on the foreshore of the Blue Nile at Singa about 200 miles south of Khartoum. I have to thank Mr G. W. Grabham, then Government Geologist, for the opportunity of studying the fossil.

1. On the Fossil Human Skulls Recently Discovered in Java and Pithecanthropus Erectus

1. On the Fossil Human Skulls Recently Discovered in Java and Pithecanthropus Erectus

Points from Foregoing Letters

A DESCRIPTION of a new fossil human skull from the middle gravels of the Thames 100 ft. terrace at Swanscombe, Kent, is given by A. T. Marston. Its features are those of a specialized type less advanced than the well-known Piltdown skull. The author considers that the Piltdown skull must be assumed to come from a later geological horizon than the Swanscombe skull.

Preliminary Note on a New Fossil Human Skull from Swanscombe, Kent

IN June 1935, a fossilized human occipital bone was found in situ at a depth of 24 ft. below the surface, in the middle gravels of the Thames 100-ft. terrace at Swanscombe, Kent, in association with implements of the Acheulean culture phase. A note on the discovery appeared in NATURE of October 19, 1935, p. 637.

Prof. Davidson Black, F.R.S

THE untimely death of Prof. Davidson Black, which occurred on March 15 at the age of forty-nine years, deprives the Cenozoie Laboratory of Peking of its honorary director, who had unique qualifications of knowledge, temperament and technical training to make him the ideal man for such a position. Not only had he in high degree the competence and personal qualities for the work, but he also had the enterprise and courage boldly to pursue the adventurous policy which has met with such conspicuous success. When he entered the University of Toronto, Prof. A. B. Macallum recommended him before entering the Faculty of Medicine to acquire some general training. Acting on this suggestion, Davidson Black studied anthropology and took an arts degree. After qualifying in medicine he became instructor in anatomy in the Medical School of the Western Reserve University at Cleveland, Ohio. At the end of 1913 he was made assistant professor of anatomy under Prof. Wingate Todd, and after his marriage he came to England and worked at comparative neurology in my department in the University of Manchester. At that time I was working on the reconstruction of the Piltdown skull and the study of the endo-cranial cast obtained from it, and for purpose of comparison had collected casts of all the known fossil human skulls. This work aroused a much greater interest in Dr. Davidson Black than the brains of the Dipnoi in which I was trying to engage his interest, and he at once made himself familiar with all of the material I had collected, and informed me that that was the kind of work to which he was determined to devote his life. He at once set to work to train himself for iuch a career, acquiring the technical experience and studying the geological literature which was essential for the field work he contemplated. His attention was arrested by the writings of a fellow Canadian, Dr. William D. Matthew, at that time a member of the staff of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In particular he was fascinated by the work entitled “Climate and Evolution” which was published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, and this gave Davidson Black the complete conviction that China was the place where primitive man was likely to be discovered. Hence in 1916 when, after his military service, he was offered the position of professor of neurology in the Peking Union Medical College, he at once accepted the offer under the conviction that it coincided with the ideas he had formed as to his career.

The Peking Skull*

WITH characteristic promptitude, Prof. Davidson Black has now provided us with a full report upon the features of the Peking skull, giving a detailed description of its external form, illustrated by 16 photographic plates (each photograph provided with a transparent explanatory drawing) and 37 text-figures. The drawings represent exact orthogonal projections not only of the type skull but also of the second skull of Sinanthropus, the finding of which was discussed in NATURE of Aug. 9, 1930 (p. 210), and of a series of other fossil human skulls. The purpose of this comparison is to define the distinctive characters of Sinanthropus and to emphasise the contrasts in size and proportions that differentiate it from Pithecanthropus and the series of Neanderthal skulls. An elaborate series of measurements is provided together with a statistical analysis of the significance of the figures, in comparison with those of other fossil human types, as well as of representatives of modern races of men. Hence complete data are now available to enable the anthropologist to realise the distinctive features of the Peking skull and the reasons which induced Prof. Davidson Black to differentiate it from all other known human types and assign it a distinctive generic rank.

65. On Posthumous Deformation of Fossil Human Skulls.

65. On Posthumous Deformation of Fossil Human Skulls.

The fossil human skull found at Talgai, Queensland

Situated in the Darling Downs of Southern Queensland, in the vicinity of the town of Warwick, are a series of alluvial flats, watered by the tributary creeks of the Condamine River, which is itself a branch of the Darling. One of these creeks, the Dalrymple, winds a tortuous course through the black-soil country, a few miles north of Warwick, and traverses Talgai Station. In the year 1884, after exceptionally heavy rains, the creek came down in strong flood and overflowed the flats to a width of over half a mile. When the floods subsided, it was found that an old water course or “billabong” had been washed out, leaving a channel about ten feet in depth. A fencer who was at work at Talgai at this time, while traversing this freshly washed-out channel, had his attention arrested by what seemed to he a curiously shaped stone in the side of the cut, lying embedded by itself, not at the bottom, but about three feet up the side. It was firmly fixed in the clay, and in dislodging it he formed the opinion that it had not been recently disturbed. When he had freed it, perceiving that it was a skull, he took it to the proprietor of Talgai Station, from whose son it passed into the possession of Mr. E. A. Crawford, of Greenethorpe, New South Wales. This gentleman, in May, 1914, submitted a photograph of it to Prof. Edgeworth David, F. B. S., Professor of Geology in the University of Sydney, who showed it to Prof. J. T. Wilson, F. R. S. He, immediately perceiving the possibilities, expressed a strong desire to have the specimen itself forwarded to Sydney. This having been done, the preliminary investigations were immediately commenced by Profs. David and Wilson, and the results communicated to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Sydney, in August, 1914(1). Shortly after this, Prof. David made a journey to the site of the discovery. He was fortunate enough to find the original discoverer, who, though a very old man, retained a clear recollection of the circumstances of the find. He visited the locality, and, with a memory still clear as to the local conditions, pointed out to Prof. David, to within a few yards, the spot in the gully where the skull was unearthed. His account of the discovery was as just related, and he was able to identify the formation of red-brown clay, interspersed with nodular concretions of carbonate of lime, as identical with that from the upper portion of which the skull was originally removed.

Societies and Academies

LONDON.RoyaI Society, February 22.Sir J. J. Thomson. president. in the chair.S. A. Smith: The fossil human skull found at Talgai, Queensland. This is a description of the fossil human skull that was shown by Profs. Edgeworth David and j. T. Wilson at the meeting in Sydney of the British Association. Before the specimen could be studied it was necessary to clear away a hard mineral incrustation of carbonate of lime which was coloured with iron salts. It was then found to be the highly fossilised and much fractured skull of a male youth not moreprobably some years lessthan sixteen years of age. The brain- case, the capacity of which was at least 1300 cc., is well within the range of variation of modern aboriginal Australian skulls, to which it presents a very striking similarity in general conformation, as vell as in respect of the distinctively Australian characteristics. But the facial skeleton reveals an important contrast. The exceptionally large teeththe canines especiallyhave been rcsponsible for a great develop- ment of that portion of the alveolar process which lodges the incisor, canine, and premolar teeth. In respect of this feature the Talgai skull is probably more primitive and ape-like than that of any other known specimen belor ging to the human family, excepting only the Piltdown skull, the dental arcade of which that of the Talgai skull, in spite of its immaturity, nearly approaches, not only in actual size, but also in its relative proportions. The fact that the brain-case had already reached the stage represented in the modern Australian aboriginal, while the face still retained much of the grossness and uncouth- ness of the ape's, is a further confirmation of the view that, in the evolution of man, the brain first acquired the human status and the refinement of the features came afterwards.Dr. C. Chree: The magnetic storm of August 22, 1916. The paper gives an account of a magnetic storm, accompanied by aurora in Scotland, which occurred on August 2223, 1916. A comparison is made of the results derived from the magnetic curves at Kew and Eskdalemuir Observatories. The disturbance was much larger at the latter station than at the former. During, however, the most disturbed period, both places afforded a con-spicuous example of the type of storm in which the direction of the disturbance vector shows a rapid rotation. During this period the disturbance vector diagram in the horizontal plane was described con-tinuously in a counter-clockwise direction, nearly a complete revolution being effected in the course of one hour.Prof. W. H. Young: The ordinary con- vergence of restricted Fourier series.

Observations on Recently Discovered Fossil Human Skulls 1

Observations on Recently Discovered Fossil Human Skulls 1

The Royal Anthropological Institute

PROF. ARTHUR KEITH publishes in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute for January–June, 1914, his presidential address on the reconstruction of fossil human skulls. This is, to a large extent, the outcome of the controversy which arose on the reconstruction of the Piltdown skull, in which his scheme differed from that suggested by Dr. Smith Woodward. As a practical test of his methods Prof. Keith invited Dr. Douglas Derry to furnish him with fragments of a specimen skull, which he engaged to reconstruct and to publish the results of his experiment, whatever might be the result. The reconstruction of this skull by Prof. Keith so closely, in his opinion, resembles the cast of the original skull from which the fragments were taken as to confirm the validity of his methods. He is thus led to deny that the architecture of the human skull lies outside the limits of true science. He asserts that it is framed according to definite principles, that all its parts are correlated, and that it is possible from a part—if our knowledge is accurate and full—to reconstruct the whole. The address marks a decided advance in our knowledge of the science of craniometry.