Scientists have revealed the face of what may be the ‘oldest human’ to walk the Earth – a woman who lived 45,000 years ago.
Her dark features were brought to life by an international team of academics from Brazil, Australia and Italy using a digital model of her broken skull.
The fossilized remains recovered in Czechia more than 70 years ago are only a portion of the skull, as researchers believe she was consumed by an animal after death.
‘We looked for elements that could compose the visual structure of the face only at a speculative level since no data was provided on what would be the color of the skin, hair and eyes,’ [co-author Cícero] Moraes said.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany announced in 2021 that Zlatý kůň lived just 2,000 years after the first interspecies trysts between humans and Neanderthals.
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The DNA from this person and their population is not seen in modern-day people in either Asia or Europe, where Homo sapiens later colonized, the researchers found.
This evidence, the academics said, means the Czechia individual is almost certainly older than other contenders with a claim as the earliest human fossil in Europe.
