This portrait shows a male specimen of Homo naledi, a hominin species which lived in southern Africa between 335,000 and 236,000 years ago. It would have been contemporaneous with some of the earliest modern humans (Homo sapiens), but Homo naledi itself had a number of “primitive” characteristics such as an apelike face and a hand morphology adapted to climbing trees (although its feet were more like those of a typical bipedal hominin). Therefore, I went with a more apelike take in depicting this species, but I gave it kinky “Afro” hair to represent its close evolutionary affinity with modern human beings.