Skhul and Qafzeh: Early Modern Humans in the Levant

The Skhul and Qafzeh caves in northern Israel contain the burials of some of the earliest Homo sapiens known outside Africa. Dated to roughly 120,000 to 90,000 years ago, the skeletons show that modern humans reached south-west Asia tens of thousands of years before they settled Europe. They also hold some of the oldest deliberate graves and ornaments in the world, and they suggest that an early wave of people out of Africa did not lead to lasting settlement.

Background: the Levant crossroads

The Levant, the strip of land along the eastern Mediterranean, is the only land bridge between Africa and Eurasia. Any human population moving out of Africa on foot had to pass through it or cross the southern Red Sea. Its caves have therefore long been central to questions about human dispersals.

During warm, wet phases of the last interglacial period, around 130,000 to 115,000 years ago, the deserts of North Africa and Arabia became greener. African animals spread into the Levant, and early humans may have followed. In colder, drier phases the region was more connected to Eurasia, and Neanderthals moved in from the north.

Skhul: the Mount Carmel excavations

Skhul (Mugharet es-Skhul, “Cave of the Kids”) is a small rock shelter in the Nahal Me’arot valley on the western slopes of Mount Carmel, south of Haifa. Between 1929 and 1934 the British archaeologist Dorothy Garrod led excavations in the valley’s caves, a pioneering project that employed many local women as workers. In 1931 and 1932 her American colleague Theodore McCown excavated Skhul.

McCown recovered the remains of about ten individuals, adults and children, several of them in graves. The best known is Skhul V, an adult male skull with a high braincase combined with a heavy brow. Nearby, at Tabun Cave, the same project found a Neanderthal woman.

In 1939 McCown and the anatomist Sir Arthur Keith published the human remains. They saw the Skhul and Tabun people as a single, highly variable population with features of both Neanderthals and modern humans. Later researchers separated them: Skhul is now generally classed as early Homo sapiens, albeit with some archaic traits, and Tabun as Neanderthal.

Qafzeh: graves near Nazareth

Qafzeh Cave lies on Jebel Qafzeh (Mount Precipice), just south of Nazareth in Lower Galilee. It was first excavated from 1933 to 1935 by the French archaeologist René Neuville with Moshe Stekelis, who found several human skeletons. From 1965 to 1979 the French palaeoanthropologist Bernard Vandermeersch led renewed work and uncovered many more.

In total the cave has produced the remains of more than a dozen individuals, including many children. Notable finds include:

• Qafzeh 9 and 10: a young adult buried together with a small child at the feet, one of the oldest known double burials.
• Qafzeh 11: a child of about 12 or 13 years, buried with the antlers of a fallow deer placed on the chest. A later study found that the child had suffered a severe head injury years before death.

The site also yielded lumps of red ochre, some heated to change their colour, and perforated seashells brought from the Mediterranean coast, about 35 kilometres away.

Key people

• Dorothy Garrod (1892–1968) directed the Mount Carmel excavations and in 1939 became the first woman to hold a professorship at the University of Cambridge, as Disney Professor of Archaeology.
• Dorothea Bate (1878–1951), a palaeontologist at the British Museum (Natural History), studied the animal bones and co-wrote the first Mount Carmel volume.
• Theodore McCown (1908–1969), an American archaeologist who later taught at the University of California, Berkeley, excavated Skhul and described its people.
• Sir Arthur Keith (1866–1955), a Scottish anatomist, co-authored the study of the human remains.
• René Neuville, a French prehistorian and diplomat, began the work at Qafzeh.
• Bernard Vandermeersch, a French palaeoanthropologist, excavated most of the Qafzeh burials and wrote the standard study of them.

A mixed population?

Even today the Skhul and Qafzeh people do not look exactly like living humans. Several have large faces, prominent brows and big teeth, and the Skhul skulls in particular differ from one another quite markedly. Some researchers explain this as the normal variation of an early population of Homo sapiens. Others think it may reflect contact and occasional interbreeding with Neanderthals or other archaic groups in the region. The question remains open, and new analyses of the original fossils continue to appear.

Dating the caves

When they were found, the Skhul and Qafzeh people were assumed to be relatively young, perhaps 40,000 to 50,000 years old, and were often seen as descendants of local Neanderthals. In 1988 the French physicist Hélène Valladas and colleagues used thermoluminescence on burnt flints from Qafzeh to obtain an age of about 92,000 years. Electron spin resonance dating of teeth gave ages of roughly 100,000 to 115,000 years. Similar methods placed Skhul at about 130,000 to 100,000 years, though estimates vary.

These results overturned the old picture. They showed that modern-looking humans lived in the Levant earlier than some of the region’s Neanderthals, such as those at Kebara and Amud, which date to around 60,000 to 50,000 years ago. The idea that Neanderthals simply evolved into modern humans there could no longer be sustained.

Ornament, burial and behaviour

Skhul and Qafzeh are important for behaviour as well as anatomy. Shells of the marine snail Nassarius from Skhul, with holes suitable for stringing, were published in 2006 as beads at least 100,000 years old. Together with the Qafzeh shells and ochre, they are among the earliest evidence of personal ornaments anywhere.

Yet the stone tools are Levantine Mousterian, essentially the same Middle Palaeolithic technology used by Neanderthals in the region. At this stage there was no simple match between anatomy and culture.

An early, temporary exit

Most researchers now see Skhul and Qafzeh as evidence of an early dispersal of Homo sapiens from Africa during the last interglacial. A modern-looking jaw from nearby Misliya Cave, dated to about 194,000 to 177,000 years ago, and the disputed Apidima skull from Greece suggest that there were even earlier forays.

These early groups do not appear to have been the main ancestors of living non-Africans. After about 90,000 to 80,000 years ago the Levant record shows only Neanderthals until modern humans reappear around 55,000 years ago, at the start of the great expansion out of Africa. Genetic studies suggest that some of these early modern humans interbred with Neanderthals, leaving traces of their DNA in Neanderthal genomes.

Timeline

• c. 130,000-100,000 years ago: Estimated age range of the Skhul burials.
• c. 115,000-90,000 years ago: Burials at Qafzeh, including Qafzeh 9, 10 and 11.
• 1929-1934: Dorothy Garrod directs excavations in the Mount Carmel caves.
• 1931-1932: Theodore McCown excavates Skhul and recovers about ten individuals.
• 1933-1935: René Neuville and Moshe Stekelis excavate Qafzeh.
• 1939: McCown and Keith publish the Mount Carmel human remains.
• 1965-1979: Bernard Vandermeersch leads new excavations at Qafzeh.
• 1988: Thermoluminescence dating places Qafzeh at about 92,000 years.
• 2012: The Nahal Me’arot caves, including Skhul, become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

Skhul and Qafzeh moved the story of modern humans outside Africa back by tens of thousands of years. They show that the spread of Homo sapiens was not a single event but a series of advances and retreats, and that some of the earliest graves and ornaments were made by people who later vanished from the region.