300,000 years ago, the faces of ancient humans resembled those of modern humans

A: Hualong Cave No. 6 fossil; B: virtual restoration skull; C: physical restoration skull; D: sculpture skull; E: restored image.

Did the ancient humans of 300,000 years ago look like us today? Paleoanthropologists have solved the mystery by reconstructing the appearance of human skulls in Hualong Cave, Anhui Province—a flat face that resembles modern People in East Asia.

A few days ago, the Chinese-foreign cooperation team led by Researcher Liu Wu and Researcher Wu Xiujie of the Institute of Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences published a research paper entitled "Morphological Description and Evolutionary Significance of Human Facial Bones in Hualong Cave, China 300,000 Years Ago" online in the international academic journal Journal of Human Evolution, proposing that the evolutionary transition of humans from ancient to modern forms in East Asia has occurred 300,000 years ago, 80,000-100,000 years earlier than previous understanding.

The study found that the faces of ancient humans in Hualong Cave 300,000 years ago showed mosaic morphological features. Except for some upper orbital and zygomatic features similar to Those of Mid-Pleistocene Homo erectus and archaic humans such as Zhoukoudian, Nanjing, Dali, and Jinniushan, most of the facial features are in the range of variation of early modern humans and modern humans, especially the rather flattened faces are similar to those of modern humans in East Asia, but are significantly different from Those of Middle Pleistocene Homo erectus.

Since 2013, the research team has conducted continuous investigations and excavations of the Hualong Cave site in Dongzhi County, Anhui Province, and found more than 30 ancient human fossils. Through uranium dating, fauna composition analysis and stratigraphic comparison, the age of these ancient human fossils was determined to be between 331,000 and 275,000 years old. This is the site of the most abundant number of human fossils found in China after Zhoukoudian, containing evidence of human activities such as stone tools.

Among the human fossils found in Hualong Cave is a complete skull numbered Hualong Cave No. 6, which preserves a complete facial skeleton. In this study, the facial skeleton of Hualong Cave No. 6 was observed and measured in detail by traditional morphological description, high-definition CT, multivariate statistics, etc., and compared with the worldwide Pleistocene ancient and modern human specimens. The reconstructed image of the head and face clearly and intuitively shows that this is the face of a young and modern female individual.

Hualongdong 6 is the first ancient human fossil found to date that exhibits such a rich number of modern human facial features, and has not been found in the late Pleistocene fossil record in China or even in the entire East Asian past. Liu Wu pointed out that Hualong Cave No. 6 represents the earliest modern human facial skeletal morphology and appearance in East Asia. The modern human characteristics it presents suggest that the people who lived in Hualong Cave 300,000 years ago represent the earliest quasi-modern people in East Asia.

The population represented by Hualongdong 6 is not only the earliest member of the transition from ancient to modern forms in East Asia, but the initial evolutionary transition to modern forms is likely to have occurred in a relatively isolated local area, while other parts of China are still occupied by more ancient human members.

It is reported that the study was completed by researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an Jiaotong University, and the University of Southern California. (Reporter Xu Qimin)

Source: Wen Wei Po