The face of the oldest known human being, whose body rewrote history, can be seen for the first time in 300,000 years.
The Jebel Irhoud remains were a bombshell revelation that changed human history, with the first man on Earth being 100,000 older than experts originally predicted.
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They also proved that our ancestors surpassed the “cradle of humanity” in East Africa for millennia, spreading across the entire continent.
Now the face of our oldest ancestors has been revealed after scientists reconstructed their appearance using the shape of their skull.
Brazilian graphic specialist Cícero Moraes, who carried out the innovative reconstruction, described the Neanderthal’s face as “strong and serene”.
He said: “I initially scanned the skull in 3D, using data provided by researchers at the Max Planck Institute.
“Then I proceeded with the facial approximation, which consisted of crossing different approaches, such as anatomical deformation.
“This is where the tomography of a modern human being is used, adapting it so that the donor’s skull becomes the Jebel Irhoud skull and the deformation ends up generating a compatible face.”
More data taken from modern humans was used to predict soft tissue thickness and the appearance of the nose and other facial features.
Moraes added: “The final aspect is the interpolation of all this data, which generates two groups of images, one objective, with more technical elements, without hair and in gray scale.
“The other is artistic, with skin and hair pigmentation.”
The donor data used was from an adult male with a low body mass index.
Moraes said he gave the skeleton a masculine face because he thought the skull was stronger and more masculine.
The skull is made from fossils and recreated into one that he said is “excellent and quite coherent, anatomically speaking.”
According to the Max Planck Institute, the Jebel Irhoud remains show “a modern-looking face and teeth, and a large but more archaic-looking braincase.”
The transformation of the braincase over time is likely related to genetic changes that affect brain connectivity and development, the institute said.
Moraes said the skull reminded him of another, Skhul V, which was found in northern Israel and dates to about 180,000 years later.
Placed next to each other, they tell a huge story of human development.
He said: “The Jebel Irhoud skull is very similar to that of Skhul V, another archaic Homo sapiens.
“However, it also has some characteristics compatible with Neanderthals or Heidelbergensis.
“I made a series of approaches to teaching images and the result was very interesting.
“We can observe the differences and compatibilities between the structures of skulls and faces over thousands of years.”
The fossils were first found in Jebel Irhoud in the 1960s and initially estimated to be 40,000 years old.
A revisit in the 1990s led scientists to date the bones to between 100,000 and 200,000 years old.
Just when you thought they couldn’t age, new technology discovered they were around 300,000 years old in 2017.
Speaking at the time, palaeoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute said: “We used to think there was a cradle of humanity 200,000 years ago in East Africa.
“But our new data reveals that Homo sapiens spread across the entire African continent around 300,000 years ago.”
Moraes said the remains constituted the first member of our species ever found.
He said: “What was most striking about Jebel Irhoud is that this discovery placed our species in a historical time 100,000 years earlier than previously imagined.
“It is currently the oldest Homo sapiens, dating back approximately 315 thousand years before the present.
“The second oldest, found at the site of Omo Kibish in Ethiopia, has been dated to 195,000 years before present.”
What are the remains of Jebel Irhoud?
JEBEL Irhoud is an archaeological site in Morocco where scientists have discovered Homo sapiens fossil bones and stone tools.
The Jebel Irhoud remains were named after the location in Morocco where they were found.
The discoveries push back the origins of our species by 100,000 years and show how 300,000 changes in our biology and behavior began across most of Africa.
The fossils were first found in Jebel Irhoud in the 1960s and initially estimated to be 40,000 years old.
A revisit in the 1990s led scientists to date the bones to between 100,000 and 200,000 years old.
Just when you thought they couldn’t age, new technology discovered they were around 300,000 years old in 2017.
In recent years, scientists have unearthed fossils of several other individuals at the site that were undisturbed by miners.
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