Last week, a slew of news stories came out, stating that evidence had been discovered proving that Homo sapiens had evolved in Israel. I obtained a copy of the professional paper that accompanied the press release, and discovered that that wasn't really what the paper said, but the site described--Qesem Cave--was pretty interesting even so. I asked some nosy questions of the Qesem Cave researchers and it turns out that they are confident that eight teeth they discovered at Qesem Cave do represent Early Modern Humans--at dates between 200,000-400,000 years ago, that would be EMH in the region of the Levant, outside of Africa, before the African sites.
Early Modern Human Sites in the Levant and North Africa. Adapted from Asia map by Curtis3250692; data from Frumkin et al.in press and Gopher et al. 2010.
But--the story is complicated, so I assembled some pages and a photo essay to go over the context for Qesem Cave, why the claims for EMH are so interesting, and to describe some of the evidence for EMH in the transition period between the Middle to Lower Paleolithic in the region of the Levant.
I asked Ran Barkai, director of the Qesem Cave Project, about the dating of the cave: currently, the published dates are on speleotherms, which are natural cave deposits. He said that there is a paper in preparation describing dates on burnt flint and animal bone which support the speleotherm dates of 200,000-400,000 years old. I also asked him if there were plans to submit the teeth for DNA analysis, which might resolve the question of whether the teeth were Neanderthal or EMH: he was the opinion that the teeth were probably too old to have intact DNA, but he was planning to look into it.
Blades from Qesem Cave. Photo by Qesem Cave Project ©2010
I also asked Dr. Barkai what plans he has for Qesem Cave in the future, and he wrote: "We have lots to do at Qesem Cave. We plan to excavate this summer and several more summers to come. We hope to find more human remains, but in the meantime, we are studying the flint tools and animal bones in order to better understand the lifeways of the Qesem Cave hominins. We are currently working on flint recycling, the production and use of scrapers, and on environmental reconstruction using micromammal bones."
More on Qesem Cave
- Photo Essay: Qesem Cave and the Lower-Middle Paleolithic Transition
- Qesem Cave, detailed description of the site and artifacts
- Acheulo-Yabrudian Cultural Complex
- Qesem Cave Project, official website
Hershkovitz I, Smith P, Sarig R, Quam R, Rodríguez L, García R, Arsuaga JL, Barkai R, and Gopher A. 2010. Middle pleistocene dental remains from Qesem Cave (Israel). American Journal of Physical Anthropology:n/a-n/a.
See the Bibliography for additional sources.
Comments
As you’re talking history in a scientific manner, rather too deep in time then you have to be more scientifically inclined.
The area so called Israel for the last 60 years had the historic name of Palestine.
Kind regards.