Hofmeyr Skull
 |
|
| Common name | Hofmeyr Skull |
|---|---|
| Species | Homo sapiens |
| Age | 36,000 years ago |
| Place discovered | near Hofmeyr, South Africa |
| Date discovered | 1952 |
Coordinates: 31°34′S 25°58′E / 31.567°S 25.967°E
The Hofmeyr Skull is a specimen of a 36,000 year old human skull that was found in 1952 near Hofmeyr, South Africa. It is one of a very few anatomically modern human skulls that have been discovered on the continent which have been dated to over 20,000 years old.
The skull was found in the 1950s on the surface of an erosion gully, a dry channel bed of the Vlekpoort River, near Hofmeyr, a small town in Eastern Cape, South Africa. No other bones or archaeological artifacts were found in the vicinity at the time of the skull's discovery. The skull is one of only a few African specimens of early modern humans dated over 30,000 years in age. Others are much more recent, dated to around 20,000 years ago.
In the 1990s, Alan Morris of the University of Cape Town noticed the skull in the Port Elizabeth Museum. He later showed it to Frederick E. Grine, an anthropologist and anatomist at State University of New York at Stony Brook. Grine then led a detailed study of the skull.
It was not possible to date the skull using traditional radiocarbon dating, as the carbon had leached out of the bone. Instead, a new method involving a combination of optically stimulated luminescence and uranium-series dating methods was used. The method was developed by Richard Bailey of Oxford University. The earth material from the skull "filling the endocranial cavity" (central portion of the endocranial cavity) was dated using a combination of optically stimulated luminescence and uranium-series dating methods, coupled through a radiation-field model. Based on the assumption that the earth in the skull is about the age of its inhumation and thus the same as the age of the skull, age was estimated to 36,200 ± 3,200 years old.
...
Wikipedia