The Florisbad skull: an early Homo sapiens of southern Africa
- Date
- c. 259,000 years ago
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- Southern Africa (South Africa)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
Discovered in 1932 at the Florisbad thermal spring in South Africa's Free State, the Florisbad cranium has been directly dated by electron spin resonance on an associated molar to about 259,000 years ago.
For decades it was assigned its own species, Homo helmei, to mark its 'intermediate' status between archaic and modern humans. Following the 2017 redating of the Moroccan Jebel Irhoud fossils to roughly 300,000 years ago, many researchers now group Florisbad with the earliest representatives of Homo sapiens, showing that populations with emerging modern features were spread across the African continent — from the far northwest to the south — by the late Middle Pleistocene. The fossil also carries a grim taphonomic story: hyena puncture and chewing marks suggest the individual was scavenged by a large carnivore before the remains washed into the spring vents. Florisbad is a key data point in the now-dominant 'African multiregional' or pan-African model, in which our species coalesced gradually from interlinked populations rather than in a single region.
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Further reading
The wider story
A Little History of Science
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