The Kabwe skull or Broken Hill 1 is a hominin fossil originally classified as Homo rhodesiensis. It was found in an iron and zinc mine in Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe, Zambia) in 1921 by a Swiss miner named Tom Zwiglaar. In addition to the skull, several postcranial bones were found including a femur and a tibia. The skull became known to anthropologists as Rhodesian Man but is now commonly referred to as the Broken Hill or Kabwe skull. The Kabwe skull is estimated to have a cranial capacity of 1,100cc. It has heavy brow ridges and a slightly keeled and constricted frontal bone.
The age of the remains are contentious, with secure dating impossible due to the destruction of geological context by mining activity. Archaic mammal species recovered with the skull suggest a date of 700,000-400,000 years old (Scarre, 2005). Conroy (1997) cites archaeological and palaeontological evidence that give a date of more than 125,000 years; Lewin & Foley (2004) give an age of “at least 200,000 years”.
The Kabwe skull was until recently classed as “archaic Homo sapiens” but is usually now classed as Homo heidelbergensis. Some authorities retain the H. rhodesiensis classification and reserve H. heidelbergensis for European hominins.
References:
Conroy G (1997): “Reconstructing Human Origins: A Modern Synthesis”, W.W. Norton & Co. Inc, New York, NY & London.
Lewin, R and Foley, R 2004: Principles of Human Evolution (2nd edition), Blackwell Science Ltd.
Scarre C (2005) (Ed): “The human past”, Thames & Hudson.
© Christopher Seddon 2008
2 comments:
I am new to this blog, which I find fascinating. What can you tell us about Boskop man? I have found only one book that even mentions it, and there was not much even in there.
See this link for more on Boskop Man: http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/brain/paleo/return-amazing-boskops-lynch-granger-2009.html
(Spoiler: it's a modern human population, nothing too special.)
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