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A one-million-year-old Homo cranium from the Danakil (Afar) Depression of Eritrea

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Abstract

One of the most contentious topics in the study of human evolution is that of the time, place and mode of origin of Homo sapiens1,2,3. The discovery in the Northern Danakil (Afar) Depression, Eritrea, of a well-preserved Homo cranium with a mixture of characters typical of H. erectus and H. sapiens contributes significantly to this debate. The cranium was found in a succession of fluvio-deltaic and lacustrine deposits and is associated with a rich mammalian fauna of early to early-middle Pleistocene age. A magnetostratigraphic survey indicates two reversed and two normal magnetozones. The layer in which the cranium was found is near the top of the lower normal magnetozone, which is identified as the Jaramillo subchron. Consequently, the human remains can be dated at ∼1 million years before present.

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Figure 1: Simplified geology of the Northern Danakil Depression between the Eritrean-Ethiopian plateau and the Southern Red Sea.
Figure 2: Stratigraphy of the Danakil Formation in the Buia area.
Figure 3: The UA 31 cranium.

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Acknowledgements

All fossils are stored at the Eritrea National Museum, Asmara; inventory numbers refer to the provisional catalogue. We thank M. Pickford and T. D. White for discussions about the fossil record; M. R. Gibling, I. P. Martini, P. Passerini and A. Turner for critical reading of an earlier manuscript; A. Kibrab (Eritrea Department of Mines) and Y. Libsekal (Eritrea National Museum) for assistance in Eritrea; and F. Heller (ETH Magnetic Laboratory, Zurich). This work was supported by the Italian CNR (Cultural Heritage and TRANSRIFT projects), the PeriTethys Programme, the European Commission, the University of Florence, and the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Firenze, 50121, Firenze, Italy

    Ernesto Abbate, Andrea Albianelli, Marco Benvenuti, Piero Bruni, Nicola Cipriani, Giovanni Ficcarelli, Giovanni Napoleone, Mauro Papini, Lorenzo Rook & Mario Sagri

  2. Museo di Storia Naturale, Sezione di Geologia e Paleontologia, Università di Firenze, 50121, Firenze, Italy

    Augusto Azzaroli & Danilo Torre

  3. Eritrea National Museum, Asmara, Eritrea

    Berhane Tesfamariam

  4. Department of Anatomical Sciences, Palaeo-Anthropology Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand Medical School, 2193, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Ronald J. Clarke

  5. Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico L. Pigorini, Sezione di Antropologia, 00144, Roma, Italy

    Roberto Macchiarelli

  6. Department of Mines, Ministry of Energy, Water and Mineral Resources, Asmara, Eritrea

    Tewelde Medhin Tecle

  7. Abteilung für Isotopengeologie, Mineralogisches Institut, Universität Bern, Switzerland

    Igor Villa

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  1. Ernesto Abbate
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  2. Andrea Albianelli
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  3. Augusto Azzaroli
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  4. Marco Benvenuti
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  5. Berhane Tesfamariam
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  6. Piero Bruni
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  7. Nicola Cipriani
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  8. Ronald J. Clarke
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  9. Giovanni Ficcarelli
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  10. Roberto Macchiarelli
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  11. Giovanni Napoleone
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  12. Mauro Papini
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  13. Lorenzo Rook
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  14. Mario Sagri
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  15. Tewelde Medhin Tecle
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  16. Danilo Torre
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  17. Igor Villa
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Correspondence to Ernesto Abbate.

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Abbate, E., Albianelli, A., Azzaroli, A. et al. A one-million-year-old Homo cranium from the Danakil (Afar) Depression of Eritrea. Nature 393, 458–460 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/30954

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