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 Scientists said on Wednesday the upper part of the skull, the
domed portion without the face or jaws, was unearthed in Manot Cave
in Israel's Western Galilee. Scientific dating techniques determined
the skull was about 55,000 years old.
The researchers said characteristics of the skull, dating from a
time period when members of our species were thought to have been
marching out of Africa, suggest the individual was closely related
to the first Homo sapiens populations that later colonized Europe.
They also said the skull provides the first evidence that Homo
sapiens inhabited that region at the same time as Neanderthals, our
closest extinct human relative.
Tel Aviv University anthropologist Israel Hershkovitz, who led the
study published in the journal Nature, called the skull "an
important piece of the puzzle of the big story of human evolution."
Previous genetic evidence suggests our species and Neanderthals
interbred during roughly the time period represented by the skull,
with all people of Eurasian ancestry still retaining a small amount
of Neanderthal DNA as a result.
"It is the first direct fossil evidence that modern humans and
Neanderthals inhabited the same area at the same time," said
paleontologist Bruce Latimer of Case Western Reserve University in
Cleveland, another of the researchers.
"The co-existence of these two populations in a confined geographic
region at the same time that genetic models predict interbreeding
promotes the notion that interbreeding may have occurred in the
Levant region," Hershkovitz said.
The robust, large-browed Neanderthals prospered across Europe and
Asia from about 350,000 to 40,000 years ago, going extinct sometime
after Homo sapiens arrived.
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Scientists say our species first appeared about 200,000 years ago in
Africa and later migrated elsewhere. The cave is located along the
sole land route for ancient humans to take from Africa into the
Middle East, Asia and Europe.
Latimer said he suspects the skull belonged to a woman although the
researchers could not say definitively.
The cave, sealed off for 30,000 years, was discovered in 2008 during
sewage line construction work. Hunting tools, perforated seashells
perhaps used ornamentally and animal bones have been excavated from
the cave, along with further human remains.
(Additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem; Editing by
Sandra Maler)
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