Reconstructed setting· The columns of time

Savanna of origins

350 ka → 200 ka

The landscape in which our species appears: open grassland with scattered flat-crowned trees, and small groups of people working stone by a fire.

What the evidence shows

Every element of this scene answers to a published observation. The fauna found with the Jebel Irhoud hominins is varied and typical of open country, dominated by gazelles rather than by woodland animals. The trees are there because the savannas reconstructed around eastern African hominin sites carry between 10 and 80 per cent tree cover rather than being pure grassland. The knapping figures are there because fire-heated Middle Stone Age flints were found in direct association with the human fossils, and it is those flints that gave the site its date.

Bounds and conventions

A backdrop is a reconstruction, never a photograph. What it shows is a plausible composite of the environment that several sites record, not a place where anyone once stood. The lone walker in its left margin is deliberate: through these millennia, archaic and modern forms overlap in the African record, and no single silhouette would be honest.

Sources

1. Hublin, J.-J. et al. (2017), Nature, doi:10.1038/nature22336
2. Richter, D. et al. (2017), Nature, doi:10.1038/nature22335
3. Ben-Ncer, A., Hublin, J.-J. (2017), Hespéris-Tamuda LII(2): 17-30, ISSN 0018-1005. Article sans DOI ; référence relevée sur le tiré à part de la revue le 2026-09-05. Contenu à valider en relecture.
4. Stringer, C. (2016), Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B, doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0237
5. Negash, E. W., et al. (2024), Journal of Human Evolution, doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2024.103604
6. Timbrell, L., et al. (2022), Scientific Reports, doi:10.1038/s41598-022-07742-y