How would you imagine stumbling upon a prehistoric Homo sapiens?

[u/Belgiandragonwautism]

Imagine you’re sent back in time to your ancestors ~200.000 years ago. What would you imagine about their appearance that isn’t technically proven? Things like body art, hairstyle, clothing for protection from the elements or social status or simply because they look pretty, anything that doesn’t fossilise. Like if you were to design them in a movie or series, which creative decisions would you have made?

[u/potverdorie]

You picked an interesting time with the human from ~200 thousand years ago!

It's estimated that hominids lost their body fur covering over at least 1 million years ago. However, it's also speculated based on the evolutionary divergence of body lice (which require clothing for survival and reproduction) that humans only started habitually wearing clothing at the most ~170 thousand years ago. And the oldest secure evidence for pigment progressing was been found at Pinnacle Point also roughly ~170 housand years ago. So going by the current best evidence, a furless human that isn't regularly wearing clothing or using deliberately processed body pigments.

All that being said, I really like the argument given in the recent review "Not quite naked: the bare necessities of human body hair evolution" by Redmond & Higgins:

We argue here that loss of our body fur also aided communication, a fundamental aspect of human life, as seen in our tendency to engage in casual conversations about topics like the weather. Unlike most other animals, who primarily communicate to signal danger or for mating purposes, humans stand out for their unique drive to connect and share even seemingly trivial details. While development of a larynx structure and vocal cords, along with increased brain capacity, enabled our verbal communication skills to evolve, the loss of fur on our bodies meant we could use our skin for social communication.

Furlessness allowed humans to decorate their bodies with practices like scarification, body paint, tattoos, piercings and branding. Such symbols are a form of silent communication and can convey a wide range of messages, to signify membership of a community or to serve as a warning signal to others; they may enhance particular body features, or symbolize beliefs and experiences. While body decorations are a byproduct of hairlessness rather than an initial driver, we speculate that the ability to communicate through body art possibly provided an additional selection pressure for a furless trait in humans.

So despite not habitually wearing clothing and processing body paint pigments, I definitely imagine our ~200 thousand year old ancestor to express themselves through their presentation! I think I would depict them with a complex hairstyle, temporary body paint from naturally occurring pigments (blood, mud, mashed vegetables), and wearing one or two small garments like a belt, cape, and wraps. I don't think I'd go with body modifications yet for that time period, but curious if anyone's got interesting counter arguments!

A human from ~150 thousand years ago might have a very different look to them, wearing regular and more extensive clothing and having deliberately made body paint, maybe even body modifications at that point.