The endocast of the one‐million‐year‐old human cranium from Buia (UA 31), Danakil Eritrea

Although stone tools generally co-occur with early members of the genus Homo, they are rarely found in direct association with hominins. We report that both Acheulian and Oldowan artifacts and Homo erectus crania were found in close association at 1.26 million years (Ma) ago at Busidima North (BSN12), and ca. 1.6 to 1.5 Ma ago at Dana Aoule North (DAN5) archaeological sites at Gona, Afar, Ethiopia. The BSN12 partial cranium is robust and large, while the DAN5 cranium is smaller and more gracile, suggesting that H. erectus was probably a sexually dimorphic species. The evidence from Gona shows behavioral diversity and flexibility with a lengthy and concurrent use of both stone technologies by H. erectus, confounding a simple “single species/single technology” view of early Homo.

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“…Geology master data. References (39)(40)(41)(42)(43)(44)(45)(46)(47)(48)(49)(50)(51)(52)(53)(54)(55)(56)…”

Section: Supplementary Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Co-occurrence of Acheulian and Oldowan artifacts with Homo erectus cranial fossils from Gona, Afar, Ethiopia

et al. 2020

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“…Even more remarkably, to one degree or another the same observation holds true for other eastern African crania generally assigned to this group. Those heterogeneous fossils include the KNM-ER 42700 calvaria from Ileret in East Turkana (~1.55 Ma, 721–744 ml: Spoor et al ., 2007 ; its tiny volume may be at least partially attributable to slightly subadult status: Baab, 2008 ); the Olduvai OH 9 fossil (1.2–1.4 Ma, 1067 ml), the earliest known hominin with a cranial volume in excess of 1000 ml; the Daka calvaria NME BOU-VP 2/66 from Ethiopia (~1 Ma, 995 ml), the Buia cranium UA 31 from Eritrea (~1 Ma, 995 ml: Bruner et al ., 2016 ); and the Olorgesailie partial calvaria KNM OG 45500 from southern Kenya (~900 Ka, 700–800 ml: Potts et al ., 2004 ). In this rather motley assortment of fossil hominins it is hard to detect any consistent trend in endocranial volume over time.…”

Section: Brain Volumes In the Genus Homomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Those heterogeneous fossils include the KNM-ER 42700 calvaria from Ileret in East Turkana (~1.55 Ma, 721-744 ml:Spoor et al, 2007; its tiny volume may be at least partially attributable to slightly subadult status: Baab, 2008); the Olduvai OH 9 fossil (1.2-1.4 Ma, 1067 ml), the earliest known hominin with a cranial volume in excess of 1000 ml; the Daka calvaria NME BOU-VP 2/66 from Ethiopia (~1 Ma, 995 ml), the Buia cranium UA 31 from Eritrea (~1 Ma, 995 ml:Bruner et al, 2016); and the Olorgesailie partial calvaria KNM OG 45500 from southern Kenya (~900 Ka, 700-800 ml: Potts et al…”

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confidence: 99%

Endocranial volumes and human evolution

Tattersall

2023

F1000Res

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Enlarging brains have been held up as the classic (if not the only) example of a consistent long-term trend in human evolution. And hominin endocranial volumes certainly expanded four-fold over the subfamily’s seven-million-year history, while on a very coarse scale later hominids showed a strong tendency to have larger brains than earlier ones. However, closer scrutiny of this apparent trend reveals that it was extremely episodic and irregular, a fact that argues against the notion that it was driven by social interactions internal to the hominin clade. In addition, an overall tendency to brain volume increase was expressed independently and concurrently within at least three separate lineages of the genus Homo – suggesting that, whatever the exact influences were that promoted this global trend, they need to be sought among stimuli that acted comprehensively over the entire vast range of periods, geographies and environments that members of our subfamily occupied. Significantly, though, the dramatic recent shrinkage of the brain within the species Homo sapiens implies that the emergence of modern human cognition (via the adoption of the symbolic information processing mode, likely driven by the spontaneous invention of language in an exaptively enabled brain) was not the culmination of the overall hominin trend towards brain enlargement, but rather a departure from it.

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“…However, one should keep in mind that the same evidence is sometimes used to demonstrate the exact opposite: genomics data, despite interbreeding, show that the lineages were separated [23], evidence of advanced modern behaviour outside of the modern clade is much discussed [31] and experimental studies on tool-knapping may reach a different conclusion [43]. This is also why palaeoneurology can be of importance in helping to resolve the debate surrounding the origin of language, even though demonstrating the presence of the morphological traits required to develop the Basic Property for modern language does not demonstrate the presence of the ability itself, as it cannot be observed in the fossil record (see for instance [77]).…”

Section: Origin Of Language -More Questions Than Answersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Palaeoneurology and the Emergence of Language

Mounier

Noûs

Balzeau

2020

BMSAP

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The origin of language has been much debated over the years. Recent research has centred the controversies on two main ideas. Language, as defined by the Basic Property formulated by Chomsky, is a characteristic unique to Homo sapiens that developed in our species in the past 300,000 years. Other scientists argue that the Basic Property is a derived characteristic shared with other hominin species, such as H. neanderthalensis and the last common ancestor of both modern humans and Neandertals, which evolved over a long period of time, perhaps as long as two million years. Palaeoneurology, which studies the phenotype of the brain in past populations, may have left this complex topic aside because of the difficulty of deducing brain morphology from endocasts (imprints of the neurocranium) and inferring function from brain morphology. In this article, we review the various hypotheses on the evolution of language, highlighting the potential of palaeoneurology to help understand this complex aspect of human evolution, and provide an updated interpretation of previously published endocranial phenotypic data from fossil populations. This brings additional support to a long chronology framework for the origin of language in the hominin lineage: the basic property for modern language may have been in place from the last common ancestor of H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis.

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The endocast of the one‐million‐year‐old human cranium from Buia (UA 31), Danakil Eritrea

Cited by 18 publications

References 66 publications

Co-occurrence of Acheulian and Oldowan artifacts with Homo erectus cranial fossils from Gona, Afar, Ethiopia

Co-occurrence of Acheulian and Oldowan artifacts with Homo erectus cranial fossils from Gona, Afar, Ethiopia

Endocranial volumes and human evolution

Palaeoneurology and the Emergence of Language

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