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Hofmeyr: A Summary Perspective on the Context and Morphology of a Late Pleistocene Human Skull from South Africa

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Hofmeyr

Part of the book series: Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology ((VERT))

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Abstract

There is a seeming consensus among geneticists and paleontologists that Homo sapiens emerged in Africa during the Middle Pleistocene, with most genetic studies indicating that the deepest human lineages can be identified among the indigenous populations of southern Africa. The African fossil record is very spotty from MIS 7 through MIS 4, with a slight improvement in MIS 3. MIS 3 is of significance for our understanding of human evolution in Africa. This was a period of extreme climatic variability over most of South Africa, and this was accompanied by greater lithic variability in the archaeological record with the transition from the Middle to the Later Stone Age. Among the human fossils from MIS 3 is the partial skull from Hofmeyr, South Africa. The contributions that comprise the present volume reveal the tremendous amount of information that has been painstakingly extracted from this specimen. These chapters serve to place the Hofmeyr skull in the context of Late Pleistocene human evolution.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful my colleagues who provided their expertise and time to develop the contributions that comprise this volume on the background, morphology and significance of the Hofmeyr skull. I thank them also for their extreme patience during the lengthy process of compiling this enterprise. I am grateful to Justin Pargeter and Curtis Marean for enlightening discussions regarding the paleoenvironments and archaeology of southern Africa during the Late Pleistocene, for their invaluable insights, and for their comments on the text of this chapter. I also thank Krishna Veeramah for discussions related to genetics and genomics. I thank all the contributors to this volume for their scrutiny of my summaries of their chapters, and I am especially obliged to Julia Lee-Thorp, Vaughan Grimes, Johann Neveling, Simon Neubauer and Lauren Butaric for their suggestions for improvement. I am also grateful to Eric Delson for his careful reading of this chapter and for the numerous suggestions that improved it.

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    Frederick E. Grine

  2. Department of Anatomical Sciences, Stony Brook University School of Medicine, Stony Brook, NY, USA

    Frederick E. Grine

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    Frederick E. Grine

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Grine, F.E. (2022). Hofmeyr: A Summary Perspective on the Context and Morphology of a Late Pleistocene Human Skull from South Africa. In: Grine, F.E. (eds) Hofmeyr. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07426-4_13

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