Reconstructed setting· The columns of time

Savanna of origins

350 ka → 200 ka

This backdrop shows the world of the first Homo sapiens: an open grassland with broad-crowned trees, where small groups knap stone beside a hearth.

Backdrop representing the environment in which the oldest fossils of the species appear: an open grassland scattered with broad-crowned trees, occupied by small groups knapping stone beside a hearth.

What the evidence shows

Each element of the composition corresponds to a published observation. The fauna associated with the Jebel Irhoud hominins is varied and characteristic of an open environment, gazelles dominating forest species. Trees figure because savannahs reconstructed around East African hominin sites present a tree cover, that is, a proportion of ground shaded by canopy, between 10 and 80 per cent, and not a continuous grassland. The knappers figure because Middle Stone Age flints that had passed through fire were recovered in direct association with the human fossils, those flints having supplied the dating of the site.

Bounds and conventions

A backdrop is a reconstruction and not a documentary representation. It constitutes a plausible synthesis of the environment recorded by several sites and depicts no determined place. The representation of an isolated individual in the left margin is deliberate: during these millennia, archaic and modern forms overlap in the African fossil record, and no single silhouette would be accurate.