Although the skull of the early homo sapiens and that of today’s modern man differ in shape, their thinking organs are roughly the same size and rounded. The research team led by Christoph Zollikofer from the University of Zurich reports on this in the specialist journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”.
The shape of the brain of our human ancestors 160,000 years ago has been a matter of debate up to now: instead of having a rounded head homo sapiens then a broad, elongated skull with a rather elongated face; and experts assumed that the brain had a silhouette similar to that of bone. A common hypothesis: over the past 200,000 years, the thinking center has developed significantly in terms of its function and subsequently in its form. As a result, the surrounding skull also took on a corresponding shape.
The researchers reconstructed the skulls of a child and an adult that came from the Ethiopian Herto archaeological site and were around 160,000 years old. In addition, they analyzed several skull bone finds from the Qafzeh and Skuhl sites in Israel, which date back around 100,000 to 120,000 years. They then compared the 3D models of the fossil skulls with 125 skull images of modern humans. They took advantage of the fact that human brain growth is practically complete when the first permanent molars appear in childhood. The facial and skull base bones, on the other hand, continue to grow into adulthood.