Introduction: The Fossil Record of Homo sapiens in Africa – Morphological Variability in the Late Quaternary and the Significance of the Hofmeyr Skull

Abstract

Late Quaternary African fossils from MIS 8 to MIS 2 provide some idea of the considerable morphological diversity that accompanied the emergence and subsequent evolution of Homo sapiens. Fossils that are universally accepted as belonging to our species first appear in MIS 7 at about 200 ka. The intervening 190,000 years until just prior to the Holocene finds human fossils from approximately 50 sites across the African continent, but the vast majority are represented by isolated teeth or small fragments of bone. Only a dozen or so particularly informative crania are known from this lengthy span of time. Most of these date to between MIS 7 and MIS 5, none are known from MIS 4, and only two date to MIS 3. The final key phase of human evolutionary development, our worldwide expansion from Africa, occurred in MIS 3 between about 60 and 40 ka. Hofmeyr represents the only example of sub-Saharan cranial morphology that dates to the temporal span of MIS 3. The chapters in this volume document the background to this specimen and provide details of its anatomy in the context of recent African populations and penecontemporaneous Late Pleistocene crania from North Africa and Eurasia.