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Year Nines Explore the History of Humans through Skulls

In today's Year Nine Museum Project session, we were very lucky to welcome Sarah Lloyd from the Oxford Natural History Museum who had brought a collection of skulls!

As she brought the first one out, she explained that the skulls were all replicas, made from 3-D printing, and asked everyone how that made them feel. She observed that people often feel disappointed when they hear that something is a replica, but there are various reasons why museums might use replicas, such as handling, ethical considerations concerning human remains, and also simply that the museum does not own an item, but would like a copy.
 
This was the case with the first skull. She explained that it was a human skull - human being defined as a mammal with a large brain which walked on two legs. She revealed that this was a model of the skull of the famous "Lucy".

Lucy was discovered in 1974 by palaeoanthropologist Donald Johanson, who was exploring the Afar region in Ethiopia. Lucy was a type of early human called a "Australopithecus afarensis" and her remains are just under 3.18 million years old.

Sarah asked you to put several skulls of different chronological order. You tended to order them on size, but some of you used other things such as the shape of the jaw or the brow. Sarah explained how a researcher had once tried to work out what the brow was for on an early human skull, so he had made a model of it. He discovered that it wasn't much use in stopping the rain or sun getting in his eyes, but it did make him look a bit threatening. He concluded that it must have had some sort of social function. 

Sarah then asked you to answer some questions about what information you thought that you could or couldn't get from a skull. Questions ranged from what the diet of the early humans might have been, to whether they played as children, to what sort of population size there might have been. Diet could be told by shape of teeth, and even minerals in the teeth. Humans have large brains, and long childhoods, since a lot of learning is done in childhood, suggesting play might be common, as a lot of learning is done through play. Population from a skull would be more tricky to identify.

After this fascinating exploration of human skulls, Sarah then chatted to some of you about how your projects were developing and offered ideas and advice. We are very grateful to Sarah for a very enjoyable and informative workshop, and for the chance for you to discuss your project ideas with a museum expert.