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From ape to human – the journey in pictures
I came across an excellent resource that graphically illustrates the path taken by humans to attain their present form, and we can infer how our sense of facial attractiveness has transformed. This in the form of a book, “The Last Human: A Guide to Twenty Two Species of Extinct Humans.” It does a great job of putting a face on ancestral species leading to modern humans. This book illustrates meticulous reconstructions of fossils. An example of a Homo heidelbergenis reconstruction is shown below.
Reconstructing the face of a 350,000-year-old human. Start from left. Stage 1: A cast of a Homo heidelbergenis skull found in Atapuerca, Spain. Stage 2: After the addition of missing or damaged teeth and the reconstruction of the eye orbit. Stage 3: After the application of some deep soft tissues. Stage 4: After the application of most of the superficial soft tissues. Stage 5: The right half shows the complete deep and superficial soft tissue reconstruction, and the left half shows the complete facial reconstruction. Stage 6: After the application of skin. Stage 7: After the application of facial hair.
When looking at the illustrations, a few things should be kept in mind.
- In the reconstructions, the skin color is the best guess of the artist.
- The pictures on this page should not be taken as representative examples. Just as there is tremendous face shape diversity among modern humans, great diversity also existed among the ancestral species, but the reconstruction team can only work with the skull(s) on hand, and the reconstruction process is very tedious, making it unlikely that we will find very many examples of reconstructions.
- The arrangement is roughly along the line of time of appearance/existence.
- The dates list estimates of the age of the fossil (single date) or the period of the existence of the species as inferred from their remains (date range).
The great apes
The ape group currently comprises of gibbons, orangutans, chimpanzees and gorillas.
Earliest African hominids
Hominids are creatures belonging to the human-ape family. The earliest African hominids looked like apes.
Appearance of the human lineage
These looked in between apes and humans, and walked upright. Some had faces closer to those of apes than humans. They have been called ape-men or man-apes.
Appearance of Homo (Humans)
All species names beginning with Homo are human species. All but one human species went extinct but the surviving human species has absorbed other human species.(1, pdf)
Homo ergaster (Kenya, possibly South Africa; 1.9 – 1.49mya). An adult is shown on the left. Note that the juvenile (boy) bears some resemblance to twentieth century adult Australian aboriginals whereas the adult (man) looks much more ancestral.
Homo neanderthalensis (Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Iraq, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Uzbekistan; 175,000 – 27,000 years ago). Males (left two) and female. The female reconstruction is taken from a National Geographic article on Neanderthals that has been addressed previously.
These are modern humans. The earliest appearance of modern humans depends on how strict one’s definition of modern human is. If a high prevalence of ancestral features such as a poorly developed chin (can be found in significant frequencies among present sub-Saharan Africans and present Australian aborigines) or a single, prominent brow bone (can be found in some Australian aborigines) are included as part of modern humans, then modern humans date to 250,000 – 300,000 years ago in sub-Saharan Africa. A stricter definition would allow a low frequency of features that are rare or absent in most if not all current human populations, and this would contract the origin of modern humans to about 150,000 – 100,000 years ago.
Homo sapiens in sub-Saharan Africa, approximately 150,000 year old (the species is found in all continents except Antarctica). The approximate resemblance is to current Australian aborigines and sub-Saharan Africans. A way to imagine many of the earliest modern humans or borderline modern humans is to picture a sub-Saharan African or, better still, an Australian aboriginal with an overall flattened mid-facial region as seen in current Northeast Asians.
In the present, humans vary widely along the ancestral-to-derived discriminant.
20th century humans showing facial features more obviously indicative of human descent from the ancestral species. The overall highest frequency of ancestral features of the skull are found in Australian aborigines, especially in unmixed individuals of some tribes such as the Tasmanians, closely followed by sub-Saharan Africans. The most ancestral form of overall facial flatness (side view) is found among sub-Saharan African populations. Nevertheless, individuals can be found in any human population who leave no doubt about where we are coming from. Examples are not representative.
Broad changes in the ape-to-human face shape transformation are shown below.
The size of the present human face has reduced compared to ancestral humans. This process requires less deposition of bone in the face. The nuances of reduced bone deposition correspond to finer facial features.
Left: G.J. Sawyer and Viktor Deak, the two individuals largely responsible for the reconstructed faces in The Last Human, with many of their reconstructed fossils. Right: Adrie and Alfons Kennis with their reconstruction of a Neanderthal woman.
The consequences of growth retardation and shape changes resulting from other factors are shown below.
Left: A non-masculine (among men), large (6-foot-4) European male illustrating the derived form (see middle figure(2, pdf)). Both larger and less masculine skulls are more prognathic (more protuding jaws), yet note the regression of the jaw of the individual shown in the picture. If face growth is retarded during development, then one’s jaw doesn’t protrude as much even though the individual attains a large size. However, retardation of face growth cannot produce the projecting nasal bones, the projecting forehead and the well-developed chin of the illustrative example. Therefore, the ape-to-human face shape change involves both growth retardation and the development of a new face shape for humans (see figure at right(3)). This nuance is important. For instance, looking at the juvenile and adult faces of Homo ergaster and Australopithecus afarensis shown above, the juvenile faces are closer to our faces, which prompts the suggestion that human faces are neotenized faces of the ancestral species. Growth retardation is necessary but not sufficient for neoteny, and whereas growth retardation is responsible, in part, for making the jaws less protruding in humans, we can observe that the shape that has become us is a new, unique development, not the retention of an earlier development.
The direction of shift in aesthetic preferences with time roughly parallels the direction of shift in shape with time. See more materials on preferences lying along the ancestral-to-derived discriminant.
G.J. Sawyer and Viktor Deak have put faces on our long-deceased ancestors and relatives...may their souls rest in peace. Perhaps one day we shall join in Heaven our ancestors as well as relatives who ended up the losers of natural selection, meet them in the flesh, raised from the ashes in all their glory, with eternal life bequeathed unto them by the Gods, and, speaking a common tongue, reflect upon where we came from, what we became and what direction our descendents took in a journey that will not end till death does our species part from Earth and other locales our descendents may inhabit.
- Eswaran V, Harpending H, Rogers AR. Genomics refutes an exclusively African origin of humans. J Hum Evol 2005;49(1):1-18.
- Lieberman DE, McBratney BM, Krovitz G. The evolution and development of cranial form in Homo sapiens. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2002;99(3):1134-1139.
- Penin X, Berge C, Baylac M. Ontogenetic study of the skull in modern humans and the common chimpanzees: neotenic hypothesis reconsidered with a tridimensional Procrustes analysis. Am J Phys Anthropol 2002;118(1):50-62.