🔄FROM THE ARCHIVE: Israeli cave finds challenge our theories about evolution’s winners and losers.
Within Israel’s Qafzeh Cave, researchers found evidence of a sophisticated culture and remains of modern humans that are up to 100,000 years old. About 100,000 years ago, tall, long-limbed humans lived in the caves of Qafzeh, east of Nazareth, and Skhul, on Israel’s Mount Carmel. Their remains suggest a surprisingly sophisticated people defying the conventional timeline of’ migration out of Africa. But ultimately, the Skhul and Qafzeh residents did not survive.
Beginning in the late 1980s, however, more precise dating techniques upended that notion. The Qafzeh humans were around 92,000 years old, and the Skhul people were even older, averaging about 115,000 years. The age of the Skhul-Qafzeh people challenged the widely held idea thathad not left Africa until about 60,000 years ago. Even more startling: Almost all the Neanderthal remains were significantly younger.
Skhul-Qafzeh may be one example of Neanderthals outcompeting humans, albeit indirectly; Shea and other researchers note there is no strong evidence of direct physical conflict, or even that both species occupied the area at the same time. Neanderthal bodies were adapted for colder conditions. Their stocky, barrel-chested build lost less heat and offered plenty of insulating muscle, and their systems were streamlined to extract calories from food and turn them into body heat. The Skhul-Qafzeh people’s slender physiques were better at getting rid of heat than making it. Or, as Shea says, “Neanderthals liked cold and dry. Our ancestors liked warm and wet. It got cold, and humans retreated.
Hershkovitz considers his find an entirely separate lineage, a new arrival distant in time from the people of Skhul and Qafzeh by 40,000 years or more. While analysis of their DNA might solve many of the riddles about these early people, researchers so far have been unable to extract usable genetic material from the remains.Some researchers believe the Skhul-Qafzeh people were not small, isolated groups but part of a broader early movement out of Africa and into Eurasia.
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