23 February 2009

By Thabiso Mphelo

SCIENTISTS have discovered 40 strands of hair in hyena dung at the Gladysvale Cave in the Cradle of Humankind, which could be the oldest strands of human hair.

The piece of dung was discovered by Professor Lee Berger from the University of the Witwatersrand, who has been excavating the site since 1993. A paleoanthropologist, Berger’s first discovery was the tooth of an australopithecine, an upright walking ape-man that lived in South Africa about three million years ago.

The discovery was made by a team of South African and international scientists who have been analysing the hair for the past three years. Lucinda Backwell, one of the scientists from the Institute of Palaeontological Research at Wits, says that up until now, the oldest known human hair was from a 9 000-year-old mummy.

“The 40 individual strands that look like tiny rods of glass are estimated to be 250 000 years old. The glass look is to be expected, because they were found in a fossil brown hyena scat, and modern brown hyena dung is essentially a ball of compacted hair. We picked out individual hairs using fine tweezers and a microscope, and studied them using a scanning electron microscope, which is very high power, and allows one to rotate the sample to observe it from all angles, plus take photos.

“We found that the hairs were in a good state of preservation, and that the scale pattern on the hair shafts looked most like that of modern human hair.”

She says the hair dates back to a period when modern humans shared the landscape with other members of the Homo family. “At the time, early humans such as the Homo heidelbergensis roamed in the Kroomdraai area. The hairs could belong to Homo heidelbergensis or to someone not yet recognised.”

Homo heidelbergensis was a member of the family of the great apes species, or hominids, which lived around 400 000 years ago. The most recent archaeological evidence suggests that these early humans were the direct ancestors of modern humans.

She explains that ice, salt and dry environments can all conserve hair keratin for thousands of years. “Besides a few fur impressions, fossilised mammal hairs are exceedingly rare anywhere on earth, from any time period the discovery of these hairs supports the theory that hyenas accumulated some of the early hominid remains in cave sites in South Africa. This provides a new source of information on fossil mammals in the Sterkfontein Valley.

“At first we were surprised that such ancient and fragile material can preserve for a quarter of a million years in a cave in Africa. Then we were excited because it was human.

“Then we became concerned as everyone began to sensationalise the role of hyenas. We would like to clarify that brown hyenas are not dangerous to man; they are scavengers, so feed off carcasses generally killed by large cats. We do not want to add to the persecution of these endangered animals. They are not going to jump out of the bushes or carry off somebody sleeping in their bed,” says Backwell.

She highlights that advances in analytical techniques may in future shed more light on what the person looked like, their state of health, and who knows what else. “This discovery has shown that everything palaeontological and archaeological [in a study of fossil organisms and remains] is of potential value, and should be carefully protected or curated for future study.”