A research paper published in Nature in April 2020, titled Dating the skull from Broken Hill, Zambia, and its position in human evolution, that I didn't spot at that time just when the pandemic of Covid 19 locked us all up in Argentina, dated the original skull of Homo rhodesiensis, known as BH1 (Broken Hill 1) and it is much younger than expected for such a primitive hominin.
The paper by Grün, R., Pike, A., McDermott, F. et al. (Nature 580, 372–375 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2165-4) reports how they studied the Pleistocene skull discovered in 1921 in a mine at Broken Hill (now Kabwe), in what then was known as Rhodesia (now Zambia), from a site known as Broken Hill. The specimen had been described by Woodward that same year and named the Rhodesian man (Homo rhodesiensis), a new species. Currently it has been included into the same line as the European Homo heidelbergensis and therefore, the ancestor of Neanderthals and maybe, also modern humans.
Those who studied it, dated it to around 500,000 years ago but did so assuming it was similar to the European Homo heidelbergensis which is that age, and also using estimations based on correlations with other sites in Africa and fauna found at the site.
That age makes it old enough to be an ancestor of both Neanderhtals and Homo sapiens, and inside Africa it provides support to the African origin of both species. However, and this is a crucial point, the original site at Broken Hill was razed as it was mined away, and in the 1920s, dating of ancient specimens was more guess work and good will than science. So, Grün et al., decided to date it with modern technology, analyzing the skull itself.
A very recent primitive hominin
They found that its "best age estimate of 299 ± 25 thousand years" which is coincidental with the date given for the first modern humans, in North Africa, and the very primitive Homo naledi in South Africa! The authors write: "The result suggests that later Middle Pleistocene Africa contained multiple contemporaneous hominin lineages (that is, Homo sapiens, H. heidelbergensis/H. rhodesiensis and Homo naledi)" which is quite surprising. They try to play down this odd situation by saying that in Asia the situation was similar: "where Homo neanderthalensis, the Denisovans, Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonensis and perhaps also Homo heidelbergensis and Homo erectus were found contemporaneously". Indeed, but it should be noted that the minute Flores and Luzon people were isolated on insular habitats. Erectus was on the brink of extinction, and regarding Denisovans and Neanderthals it is widely accepted that they admixed and trysted with modern humans, and with each other (and, regarding Denisovans, very likely with erectus). But when it comes to Africa we are asked to believe that modern humans appeared and never mixed with any of these archaics that populated the continents.
But the researchers can't escape the fact that a very recent yet primitive hominin co-existed inside of Africa with modern humans, the write: "The age estimate also raises further questions about the mode of evolution of H. sapiens in Africa and whether H. heidelbergensi/H. rhodesiensis was a direct ancestor of our species."
Correct! If modern humans had already evolved 300 ky ago, then, how could the Homo rhodesiensis with that same age, be our ancestor? Furthermore, it has prmitivie traits: solid skull (relatively large at 1280 cm3, low forehead, prominent brow ridges.
A paper by Balzeau et al., 2017 studied the shape of the BH1 skull, and its dimensions and thickness, comparing it to other archaic hominins. It reported that its thick parietal bones resemble the Homo erectus and is unlike the "morphology observed in Neandertals and H. sapiens." Together with the Petralona skull (equally primitive, but found in Greece and also recent —286 ky) the Rhodesian man shares "a thick frontal torus or a thickened postero-lateral parietal bone... The main peculiarity of BH1 is related to its large, thick frontal torus and to high thickness values for the vault." The paper concludes that it is distinct from Neanderthals and modern humans and similar to the Homo erectus sensu lato (in a broad manner): ".. this fossil does not exhibit the apomorphic conditions observed in either Neandertals or among H. sapiens."
See the skull below, and judge for yourself:
I have posted often, that Africa was a melting pot of primitive hominins, blending into the stock of African Homo sapiens, and adding diversity to its genetic pool.
H. Rhodesiensis
Some scholars have proposed a new name for the specimen, dropping "Rhodesian man" and renaming it Bodo man, or Homo bodoensis (yes, wokeness seeks to decolonize anthropology and remove the tainted, imperialist reference to Cecil Rhodes who gave his name to Rhodesia). However, this will not solve the issue of its recent age and perhaps, its location on a dead end branch of hominins. In a recent post we mentioned a paper that analyzed the shape of the faces of humans and ancestral hominins. It reported that "The evidence instead suggests that the large and non-H. sapiens-like faces of Bodo and Broken Hill 1 ... represent taxonomic diversity in the African MP record, which could exclude the large fossils assigned to H. heidelbergensis and H. rhodesiensis as representative of an ancestral morph for H. sapiens." Meaning that they are not our ancestors.
Finally, the similarity of the Rhodesian man and Petralona was noted by Falgueres et al., 2025 and they place them together, it in a parallel and independent lineage to that of Neanderthals: " our view, the similarities in midfacial and cranial contours between Kabwe and Petralona and the absence of true Neanderthal apomorphies in their midfaces suggest that European and African samples often assigned to H. heidelbergensis (Stringer, 2012; Rightmire, 2017) remained closely related during most of the Middle Pleistocene, alongside and independent of the Neanderthal lineage. Our results from dating the matrix attached to the Petralona cranium suggest that like the Kabwe cranium, the Petralona cranium may date to about 300 ka, consistent with their persistence into the later Middle Pleistocene" They also note that their work supports the notion put forward by Quam et al., 2023 and Ashton et al., 2016, that Middle Pleistocene hominins can be grouped into two separate lineages:
One lacking Neanderthal-like features, that includes the following speciments: "Mauer, Mala Balanica, Montmaurin, Visogliano, and one of the Arago mandibles" as well as the more recent Petralona skull. The second group has Neanderthal-like features, and comprises "the Atapuerca, SH fossils, Arago 2, and specimens from Payre, Ehringsdorf, and Bau de l'Aubesier."
Taken together the data seems to suggest that Homo heidelbergensis and the Rhodesian homo from Africa may not be linked to Neanderthals or modern humans.
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