First human fossil Luzia gutted in Brazil museum fire: All about the priceless item

Luzia, the first human fossil found in Brazil, was among the many priceless items gutted in the fire at Rio de Janeiro’s treasured National Museum recently. Take a look at this relic.

• Luzia Woman was the name for an Upper Paleolithic period skeleton of a woman who was found in a cave in Brazil in 1970.

• Some archaeologists believed that the young woman may have been part of the first wave of immigrants to South America.


• The skull, which was separated from the rest of the skeleton but was in surprisingly good condition, was buried under more than 40 feet of mineral deposits and debris. Forensics have determined that Luzia died in her early 20s.

• About one-third of Luzia’s skeleton has been recovered; enough to indicate that she appears to have perished in an accident or perhaps even from an animal attack.

• Along with other material from the same expedition, Luzia was then taken to the national museum, but was put away in storage. It was not until 1995 that an team of archeologists examined the skull and noticed its unusual characteristics. They decided to draw up a profile of Luzia.

• Using her skull, researchers at Britain’s University of Manchester managed to produce a digital image of her face, which was used as the base for a sculpture displayed in the museum that went up in flames.

• What they ended up with when they finished was a face “with the features one associates with Negroid skulls, particularly the nose and jaw”. “Luzia is a priceless loss for everyone interested in civilisation,” Paulo Knauss, director at Brazil’s national history museum.

• Among the rare items of Rio’s National Museum was a meteorite named ‘Bendego’, the largest one discovered in Brazil, weighing some 5.3 tonnes. The meteorite is one of the few objects that officials could confirm had survived. Apart from Bendego, officials said an Egyptian mummy— another prized item of the museum — had survived the disaster.