Face of the oldest human revealed after 300,000 years

If you’ve ever wondered what your ancestors looked like 300,000 years ago, look no further.

The face of the oldest known human has been reconstructed for the first time, revealing a man described as ‘strong and serene’.

It was created by Brazilian graphics expert Cicero Moraes, who used a 3D scan of a skull to bring our family member back to life.

The fossils came from the remains of Jebel Irhoud, named after the site in Morocco where they were found – and proved that humans, or Homo sapiens, evolved 100,000 years earlier than thought.

They also proved that our ancestors outgrew the “cradle of humanity” in East Africa and spread across the continent for millennia before previous evidence suggested so.

Explaining the process, Mr Moraes said: ‘Initially I scanned the skull in 3D, using data from the researchers at the Max Planck Institute.

‘I then moved on to the facial approach, which consisted of crossing different approaches, such as anatomical deformation.’

This technique involved mapping the 3D skull diagram onto a prototype ‘donor skull’, which was based on an adult male with a low body mass index.

Moraes said he chose to give the skull a masculine face, based on the skull’s “robust and masculine” features.

Further data from modern humans was used to predict the thickness of the soft tissue and the likely projection of the nose and other facial structures.

“The final face is the interpolation of all this data, which generates two groups of images, one objective, with more technical elements, without hair and in grayscale,” said Mr. Moraes.

‘The other is artistic, with pigmentation of skin and hair.’

The skull itself is actually composed of several fossils, recreated into a whole that the designer says is “excellent and quite coherent, anatomically speaking.”

The Max Planck Institute, which provided the skull data, said Jebel Irhoud’s remains had a “modern-looking face and teeth, and a large but archaic-looking braincase.”

The Institute said genetic changes that affect the brain’s connectivity, organization and development have transformed the braincase into the skulls we all have today.

Moraes agreed and compared the Skhul V skull of an archaic Homo sapiens.

‘The Jebel Irhoud skull has some features compatible with Neaderthals or Heidelbergensis [extinct human relatives].

“It is very interesting to observe the differences and compatibility between the structures of these skulls and faces over thousands of years.”

Fossils from the Jebel Irhoud site were first discovered in the 1960s and estimated to be around 40,000 years old, before scientists revisited the site and new techniques revealed the bones were around 300,000 years old.

Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute said at the time: ‘We used to think that there was a cradle of humanity in East Africa 200,000 years ago.

“What we actually discovered was that Homo sapiens spread across the entire African continent earlier, about 300,000 years ago.”

The discovery eclipses what was previously the oldest Homo sapiens remains found at Omo Kibish in Ethiopia, dated to 195,000 years old.

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