The Kabwe Skull (Broken Hill) and Zambia's Call to Bring It Home

The skull came to light during mining, not a planned dig. On 17 June 1921, work at Broken Hill, a lead and zinc mine in what was then Northern Rhodesia, exposed a human cranium. The Natural History Museum records two finders: a Swiss miner, Tom Zwigelaar, and an African miner whose name was not recorded.

The original account, published in Nature in 1921, placed the skull in the mine about 90 feet below ground level and 60 feet below the water level. The lower jaw was missing. The mine company later gave the fossil to the British Museum, the institution that is now the Natural History Museum in London.

Because it surfaced in the middle of mining work, nobody recorded the find systematically, and some details of exactly where and how it lay are uncertain.

In 1921, the same year the skull was found, Arthur Smith Woodward named it *Homo rhodesiensis*. Older names such as Rhodesian Man and Broken Hill Man are still in use for the same skull.

Today the Natural History Museum and the Smithsonian Human Origins Program commonly classify the skull as *Homo heidelbergensis*. The authors of the 2020 Nature study use the combined label *Homo heidelbergensis/Homo rhodesiensis*, because the relationship between those two names is still debated. Both names point to the same skull; the argument is about how to draw lines between related ancient human groups.

The Smithsonian describes the skull as having heavy brow ridges and a large braincase of about 1,300 cubic centimetres. The museum's collection record lists the individual as an adult male. For a sense of the modern skull beside it, see our human skull facts.

The best answer is about 300,000 years. In a paper published in Nature on 1 April 2020, Grün, Pike, McDermott and colleagues gave a best estimate of 299,000 years, plus or minus 25,000, with that margin expressed as two standard deviations. In plain terms, the person most likely lived between about 324,000 and 274,000 years ago.

The method matters here. The team analysed the skull itself, using uranium-series and electron-spin-resonance approaches. The result is much younger than the figure of roughly 500,000 years that had often been repeated before. The Natural History Museum's 2020 summary and the paper's DOI are the places to read more on how the date was reached.

That age puts the Kabwe person close in time to the Jebel Irhoud fossils from Morocco, about 300,000 years old, which appear in our story on the oldest human skull. For how scientists date ancient bones in general, see how old bones are dated.

The teeth of the Kabwe skull show serious dental disease. In a 2014 peer-reviewed study, Sarah A. Lacy recorded cavities on ten teeth, along with several other problems.

Some of the lesions reached the pulp chamber, the inner part of the tooth, and the study describes evidence of substantial infection and inflammation. The findings show that severe dental disease already existed among humans of the Middle Pleistocene.

They do not point to one cause. Lacy discusses several possible contributors: reduced saliva with age, wear on the teeth, possible lead exposure and diet. The Smithsonian notes that this person may have died from an infection linked to the dental disease, or from a chronic ear infection. That remains a possibility, not a known cause of death. What the teeth do show clearly is a person who lived with serious dental disease. Our story on what bones tell archaeologists covers how specialists read health from teeth and bone.

Zambia regards the skull as part of the country's heritage and as the remains of an individual from Kabwe, and it has sought the skull's return since at least the 1970s.

The clearest recent statement came on 4 October 2023. In a statement to the National Assembly of Zambia, Tourism Minister Rodney Sikumba said the government planned to reclaim the skull. He reported bilateral talks with UK representatives at the Natural History Museum on 27 and 28 April 2023, and set out Zambia's position: the skull should return to its country of origin, with the possibility of burial in Kabwe. The National Museums Board of Zambia published a statement on its campaign for the return in 2024.

The same parliamentary statement reported the UK side's answer. UK representatives said the UK government had no plan to change its restitution legislation or to instruct the Natural History Museum to return the skull, because the museum is independent and the decision rests with its trustees. The museum itself said in 2020 that it was committed to constructive bilateral dialogue with Zambia.

The question has also reached UNESCO. In 2018, a UNESCO committee recommended continued negotiations between Zambia and the UK.

Behind the formal positions, Zambia's case rests on its own stated reasons: the skull is part of the country's heritage, it is the remains of an individual from Kabwe, and it could be laid to rest there. For how other museums and countries have handled the return of human remains, see our story on the repatriation of human remains. For later developments on Kabwe, follow the National Assembly of Zambia or Zambia's Ministry of Tourism, which have spoken for the government on the request.

The original cranium is in the Natural History Museum's palaeoanthropology collection in London, under catalogue number PA E 686. The museum's collection record lists the locality as Broken Hill, Kabwe, Zambia, classifies the skull as *Homo heidelbergensis*, and was updated in September 2025.

Whether it is on show today is less certain. The museum said on 1 April 2020 that the skull was shown in its Human Evolution gallery, and a 2013 photograph shows it in the museum's Treasures exhibition. The museum's palaeoanthropology collection page says that access to the anthropology collection is restricted during the collections move, while enquiries about returns are exempt from that restriction.

If you plan a visit hoping to see it, confirm the current gallery and access with the Natural History Museum first.

A few more questions come up often.