1. Discovery

2. Date

3. Morphology

4. Classification

5. Possible Repatriation

6. See also

7. References

The cranium was discovered in the lead and zinc mine of Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe, Zambia) on 17 June 1921^[2] by Tom Zwiglaar, a Swiss miner, and an African miner whose name was not recorded.^[3]

In addition to the cranium, an upper jaw from another individual, a sacrum, a tibia, and two femur fragments were also found. The skull was dubbed "Rhodesian Man" at the time of the find, but is now commonly referred to as the Broken Hill skull or the Kabwe cranium.

The skull is kept in the Natural History Museum, London.^[4]

Discovery

Details of the skulls recovery were recorded by Aleš Hrdlička, an anthropologist with the Smithsonian Institution.^[3] Swiss miner Tom Swiglaar and an unnamed African miner uncovered the skull on June 17th, 1921 while working an ore pocket within the mine.^[3] The skull was shown to the mine's managers, who photographed it being held by Swiglaar.^[3] It was then examined by a doctor at Broken Hill, who recognized it as a fossil of potential scientific importance.^[3] Several months later, the Rhodesia Broken Hill Mine Company shipped it to England, donating it to the British Museum in London.^[3] There it was examined by paleontologist Arthur Smith Woodward and identified as belonging to a new species, then identified as Homo rhodesiensis.^[3]

Date

The destruction of the paleoanthropological site has made stratigraphic dating impossible. Prior to the 1970's, the skull was believed to be only 30-40,000 years old.^[5] In 1974, Bada et al. (1974) established a direct date of 110 ka, measured by aspartic acid racemisation.^[6] The Smithsonian Institute now suggests an age between 150,000 and 300,000 years old, with an upper bound of 500,000 years suggested by animal fossils collected from the site.^[7][5]

Morphology

Cranial capacity of the Broken Hill skull has been estimated at 1,230 cm³.^[8] The skull suggests an extremely robust individual with the comparatively largest brow-ridges of any known hominin. It was described as having a broad face similar to that of Homo neanderthalensis (i.e. large nasal bones and thick protruding brow ridges).

The skull has cavities in ten of the upper teeth and is considered one of the oldest known occurrences of cavities. Pitting indicates significant infection before death and implies that the cause of death may have been due to dental disease infection or possibly chronic ear infection.{{cn|date=May 2018}}

Classification

Initially, the skull was classified as belonging to a novel species, Homo rhodesiensis, which is now generally classified as a synonym or African subspecies of Homo heidelbergensis. While the cranial volume overlaps with the range of Homo sapiens, other features such as the brain case morphology and prominent brow ridges are suggestive of older species.^[3] These features have led some scientists to the conclusion that Homo heidelbergensis represents a transitional phase between the earlier Homo erectus and modern humans and Neanderthals.^[3] As of 2019, no attempts to extract DNA or sequence a genome from the Kabwe skull have been successful.^[3]

Possible Repatriation

Since the 1970's, the government of Zambia has petitioned the United Kingdom for custody of the Kabwe skull, citing a number of international laws and treaties on cultural artifacts as well as colonial-era laws made by the United Kingdom.^[3] According to the interpretation of the 1912 Bushman Relics Proclamation offered by the Zambian government, it was unlawful in 1921 to remove cultural relics from Northern Rhodesia without a permit from the British South Africa Company, which it maintains was not issued to the Broken Hill mining company prior to its donation of the skull to the British Museum.^[3] In May 2018, at a meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, British delegates agreed to negotiations with Zambia regarding eventual repatriation of the artifact, accompanied by agreements regarding access to the skull and associated scans and digital data by researchers.^[3]

See also

• Bodo cranium

References

• Los económicamente débiles
• LOSE (disambiguation)
• Losee (disambiguation)
• Losees Hill
• Losee, William
• Lose It (Flume song)
• Lose It (Kane Brown song)
• Lose It (Quavo song)
• Los Ejes De Mi Carreta
• Los elegidos
• Los Elementos
• Los elementos
• Lose/Lose
• Lose/lose
• Lose-lose deal
• Lose-lose game
• Lose/Lose (video game)
• Lose My Breath (Destiny's Child song)
• Lose My Mind
• Lose My Mind (Dean Lewis song)
• Lose My Mind (disambiguation)
• Lose My Number
• Lose Myself (Erika Jayne song)
• Lose Myself (song)
• Los Enchiladas