Archaeological News: The 260,000 Year Old Florisbad Skull Could Be Key...

The two leading theories suggest that the skull belonged to a member of the human subspecies Homo heidelbergensis.

Homo heidelbergensis had a brain almost as large as that of modern humans and reached average heights similar to those of pre-industrial humans.

And although the fossil record is incomplete, the subspecies is believed to have formed 700,000 to 200,000 years ago.

The second theory is that the Florisbad skull belonged to an early form of Homo sapiens – modern humans.

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The skull has now been analyzed by researchers from the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) in Spain and Johannesburg University in South Africa.

The paleoneurologist Emiliano Bruner and his colleague Marlize Lombard published the results of their study in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences.

The study described the features of the skull and compared it to other human species such as Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals), and Homo heidelbergensis.

At first glance, the skull seems to have a very modern shape.

The discoveries have led researchers to believe that human evolution is not a linear process, but rather a mosaic.

According to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, one of the earliest known human traits, the ability to walk on two legs, developed more than four million years ago.

And the large and complex brains that we used to construct tools and develop language are much younger.

The museum said, “Many advanced features – including complex symbolic expressions, art, and sophisticated cultural diversity – have emerged primarily over the past 100,000 years.”