Shape of human brain has barely changed in past 160,000 years

There is a person by the name of "luke Taylor."

The braincase of early modern humans is the same size as it was 200,000 years ago, but it has a different shape.

Changes in behavior, such as the development of tools and art, are thought to have caused the shape of the brain to change and the skull to be strengthened.

Fossil evidence is hard to come by and there are many forces at play. It is easy for a skull with a large face to hold a large brain, but it is difficult for a small face to hold it.

The skulls of 50 hominins recovered in Ethiopia and Israel were digitally restored to compare them with those of Homo erectus and Neanderthals. The models of the fossils were compared with modern human specimen.

For the first time, researchers were able to compare the brains of children and adults to see how the brain evolved.

The team was surprised to find that the skulls of children from 160,000 years ago were very similar to those of today's kids, but the adults looked very different.

The brain grows at 95 per cent of its adult size by the age of 6.

Zollikofer says we can rule out that brains have changed significantly in shape if the fossil children have near fully developed brains. If the change is not the brain driving it, we need to look for something else.

Changes in diet or a reduced need for oxygen could be to blame.

Modern humans' faces are much smaller than those of their predecessors. When hunter-gatherers became agriculturalists around 12,000 years ago, they ate softer foods, which may have caused the change to accelerate.

Chris Stringer is the director of the Natural History Museum in London.

There isn't much evidence of major changes in diet between the Middle and Late Stone Age. Smaller ribcages and less lung capacity could be the reason for a reduction in oxygen intake.

The journal's title is PNAS and it can be found at 10.1073/pnas.

The revolution in archaeology and human evolution is covered in Our Human Story.