A Forgotten Skull Yields New Clues to Prehistory

By Rohma Abbas

London-- about ten years ago. Innocently resting atop a colleague’s bookshelf, an anthropologist discovered a priceless relic—an evolutionary emblem—the Hofmeyr skull.

“When I first looked at it, I thought, ‘I have never seen a skull that looked like that’,” said Professor Frederick Grine. “It’s a fairly unique looking specimen in South Africa”

It turned out to be about 36,000 years old.

The Hofmeyr skull, found in 1952 in South Africa, is the strongest evidence yet supporting the “out of Africa” model—a theory that humans originated in Sub-Saharan Africa.  An article authored by Grine and others who studied the skull was published in Science magazine in January.

Originally located in the East London Museum, the skull is currently being studied at Stony Brook University, where Grine is a professor. There, a plastic replica of the whole skull will be made.

After being rediscovered, the skull has been studied at various universities, specifically the University of Montreal and Oxford University. The skull could not be dated using the standard carbon-14 method because all organic material necessary for such dating had been leached out of the bone.

Scientists had to find another way to date the skull, and at Oxford they succeeded. Sand grains inside the skull’s braincase were key in the dating process; it was dated in accordance to the last time the sand had been exposed to sunlight.

Grine is going back to Africa to look at more skulls from the same area. “Being the only skull, it would be nice if it had friends.”