The Human Fossil Record. Volume 2 Craniodental Morphology of Genus Homo (Africa and Asia)

EYASI

LOCATION
Open-air site on the NE shore of Lake Eyasi, near the
Mumba Hills, northern Tanzania.

DISCOVERY

K. Kohl-Larsen, 1935 and 1938.

MATERIAL

Partial cranium (Eyasi 1); various skull fragments

(Eyasi 2 and 3). See Mehlman (1984) for possible

complications.

DATING AND STRATIGRAPHIC CONTEXT

Surface find in bone scatter (Eyasi 1); Eyasi 2 and 3

were also recovered at the surface near the shoreline of

Lake Eyasi, but bear an unknown relationship to

Eyasi 1. Mehlman (1984) believes that a derivation

from “later Middle Pleistocene” strata is most likely.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXT

Context is uncertain. Protch (1975) claimed a “Terminal

Middle Stone Age” context, but this has been strongly

contested by Mehlman (1984), who points out that the

artifact assemblage most closely resembles others

described as Sangoan or earliest Middle Stone Age.

PREVIOUS DESCRIPTIONS AND ANALYSES

The Eyasi fragments were first reported by Kohl-

Larsen and Reck (1936), and were described by

Weinert in 1939 as Africanthropus njarasensis.

Leakey (1936) assigned these specimens to the

“Pithecanthropus group,” and as long as dating was

uncertain and the hominid fossil record sparse, the

Eyasi fossils played a tantalizing but potentially

important role in the human evolutionary story.

Protsch (1981) ascribed these specimens to Homo

sapiens rhodesiensis, but Mehlman (1984) found that

the Eyasi fossils had been “poorly served’’ by

Protch‘s exegeses and preferred an “archaic Homo

sapiens” designation. Stringer (2000) probably ex-

presses a majority opinion in describing these fossils

as “late Middle or early Late Pleistocene nonmod-

ern hominins, with a long, low skull and large brows

but an occipital torus morphology with some mod-

ern characteristics” (p. 263). He compares them to

the Ngaloba and Eliye Springs hominids.

MORPHOLOGY

Three fragments seen, all same weight and color: L

occipital fragment, plus larger and small mandibular

symphyseal fragments.

Occipital

Partial occipital bone, from just L of midline, missing

part toward lambdoid suture and good portion of

nuchal plane. Very thick, especially at parietomastoid

suture. In profile, this occipital is quite vertical, with a

very slight curve to it. What is preserved of lambdoid

suture rises very steeply from region of asterion.

Suture is broken, but it appears that interdigitations

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