Another look at the Canteen Kopje Skull.

The Canteen Kopje Skull was unearthed in 1929, by a prospector named Kenneth Kemp, who was sifting the Vaal River gravels for diamonds at Klipdrift in Northern Cape Province, South Africa (river gravels are a good place to look for diamonds, since erosional processes that destroy less durable minerals can concentrate them relative to their original deposits). It made its way to the McGregor Museum in Kimberly, where it was described in a paper in the journal Nature by Robert Broom, the Keeper of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the South African Museum in Cape Town.

A modern visitor posses with the Canteen Kopje Skull. Tripadvisor.

Broom described the skull as being of great antiquity, due to its heavy mineralization. He furthermore noted that it lacked a lower jaw or teeth, a sign, he felt, that it was not a burial, but a skull that had been interred in the Vaal River deposits by natural means, though he noted the presence of 'limb bones' which would be highly unlikely (from the viewpoint of a 21st century palaeontologist) to survive natural interment in a fast moving river environment (sluggish rivers do not shift gravel), or reworking from a more stable environment. The gravels at the Canteen Kopje sight are thought to be Late Pliocene to Pleistocene in age, and have not yielded any other bones. At the time interest in the study of early man in South Africa was growing, and the skull was assigned to a race of humans known as Boskop Man, that were then thought to have roamed pre-historic South Africa, but are now regarded as mythical; the bones assigned to Boskop Man are slowly being re-assigned to other human groups.

In a paper published in the South African Journal of Science on 16 January 2012, a team of scientists led by Patricia Smith of the the Laboratory of Biological Anthropology and Ancient DNA at the Hadassah Faculty of Dental Medicine at the The Hebrew University of Jerusalem describe a re-examination of the Canteen Kopje Skull, and the conclusions drawn from it.

Smith et al. examined the current setting of the Canteen Kopje Skull, which has been set into a plaster reconstruction of Boskop Man, and coated with (now chipped and discoloured) shellac, and came to the conclusion that it would not be possible to remove the skull fragments from the plaster matrix without risking damage to the delicate skull. They also noted that the skull showed signs of having received a fairly serious injury in life, but had apparently recovered, something that Broom apparently overlooked.

The Canteen Kopje Skull, as reassembled by Robert Broom. Arrow points to the healed injury. From Smith et al. (2012).

Faced with this problem Smith et al. decided to examine the skull via computerized X-ray tomography (CT scans). Based upon these scans they could find nothing to distinguish the Canteen Kopje Skull from other modern, pre-European skulls, and conclude that the skull is probably of no great antiquity. The skull has undergone some re-mineralization, but it is now understood that this can be a quite rapid process, indeed modern palaeontologists generally suspect that most preserved bones are re-mineralized quite soon after burial, with bones that do not undergo this process decaying within a few years.

3D tomogram reconstructions of the Canteen Kopje Skull, the curly object inside the skull is a bent metal bar supporting the plaster matrix. From Smith et al. (2012)

See also Neanderthals using red ochre at least 200 000 years ago, Fishermen targeting tuna in East Timor at least 42 000 years ago, A re-evaluation of the Iwo Eleru skull, Ancient Ape Skull found in Uganda and Rock Carving on the Gower Peninsula; Britain's oldest art?

A re-evaluation of the Iwo Eleru skull.

Iwo Eleru is an archaeological site in southeast Nigeria, which comprised a rock shelter containing a number of stone tools and a single human skeleton. It was excavated in 1965 by a team lead by Thorstan Shaw of the University of Ibadan. The findings were published in 1971 in a paper in the journal Man (since 1995 replaced by The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute) by Don Brothwell of the Natural History Museum and Shaw. The initial study made morphometric analysis of the skull which suggested that Iwo Eleru man was similar to modern West Africans, but with some archaic features. Morphometric analysis is a method by which a large number of measurements are taken of a fossil, then compared to similar fossils within the same group in order to determine affinities. A radio-carbon date was established for charcoal associated with the skeleton, which gave a age of approximately 13 000 years.

The location of Iwo Eleru and the reconstructed skull.

This month a team lead by Katerina Harvati of the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoecology, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen published a paper in the journal PLoS One in which they re-examine the Iwo Eleru skull and provide a new morphometric analysis based upon digital measurements of the skull (the original study used calipers, the best technology available at the time) and a uranium-thorium date for the site.

Despite the extensive studies that have been made of the origins of humanity in Africa, comparatively little is known about human populations there during the Late Pleistocene, and even less for West Africa. For the purpose of the study the Iwo Eleru skull has been compared to a number of neanderthal, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo erectus, modern and other Pleistocene African and Near Eastern skulls. The other African and Near Eastern Pleistocene skulls were the two skulls from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, currently dated at 160 000 years old, the Ngaloba skull from Laetoli in Tanzania, currently dated at 120 000 years old, two skulls from Qafzeh in Israel, currently dated at between 80 000 and 120 000 years old, the Singa skull from Jebel Irhoud in eastern Sudan, currently dated at between 87 000 and 127 000 and the Skhul skull from Mount Carmel in Israel, currently dated at 100 000 years old.

The morphometric analysis produced by Harvati et al. produced to distinct groups of skulls, one containing the archaic humans (neanderthals, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo erectus) and one containing the modern humans, with some of the Pleistocene African and Near Eastern skulls falling into these groups and some intermediate.

One of the Qafzeh skulls fell consistently within the archaic group, and the Skhul skull was consistently either in or close to this group (more than one analysis was run, since none of these skulls is complete). The other skulls were, depending on the analysis, either in or close to the modern set, or intermediate between the two - with the exception of Iwo Eleru, which was consistently intermediate between the two groups.

This suggests that Iwo Eleru is not a fully modern human, and that therefore more archaic humans can be thought to have persisted in West Africa later than was previously thought. However Harvati et al. do not consider Iwo Eleru to be distinctive enough to classify it as a separate species, preferring to consider it to be an archaic form of modern human (Homo sapiens).

Until comparatively recently the idea of archaic humans surviving as recently as the Late Pleistocene would have been highly controversial. However the recent discoveries of Homo floresiensis in 2003, a distinct species of humans that survived as recently as 13 000 years ago on Flores Island in Indonesia and the Denisovan people in 2010, a species of human living in Siberia around 40 000 years ago, make this rather less surprising. Instead this extends our knowledge of archaic human forms that lived alongside us until quite recently into a new area.

The skull of Homo floresiensis, a 1.1 m hominid from Indonesia.

The Uranium-thorium date established for the bones gave an age of between 11 700 and 16 300 years old, consistent with the original dating.

See also Ancient Ape skull found in Uganda, Rock carving on the Gower Peninsula, Out of Africa(?) and Mammals on Sciency Thoughts YouTube.