ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology

To read the full abstract: Science Advances 2018;4:eaao5961

Present-day humans have globular brains and globular endocasts with steep frontal, bulging parietal, and enlarged, rounded cerebellar areas with small and retracted faces. In contrast, Neandertals and other archaic Homo individuals have anterior-posteriorly elongated flat endocasts. These differences are well-visualized in their paper: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/1/eaao5961/tab-figures-data. Following the discovery of the most ancient H. sapiens at Jabel Irud in Morocco of 300,000 years ago, this study suggests that our round skull evolved to include our pre-frontal cortex as recently as 50,000 y.a. As the researchers study the skulls and not the brains, they cannot be sure which modern structures were missing from the ancient brains. Yet, these results suggest that our cognitive capacity, generated from the prefrontal cortex, are also as recent, and that the flat skull of our predecessors could not contain a functioning frontal cortex. They also suggest that the cerebellum and the postcentral gyrus, which is involved in sensory, attention, memory and planning functions, are among the brain regions that developed most recently. It is interesting that 50,000 y.a. is about the time when Homo Sapiens started to produce bone tools and to paint its caves.