Early Modern Humans in Israel-Palestine and the Middle East | Middle East And North Africa

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EARLIEST MODERN HUMANS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Qafzeh skull from Israel

Our concept of human origins was thrown for a major loop in 2017 with the announcement of the discovery of modern human fossils, dated to 300,00 years ago, about 100,000 years older than any other known remains of our species, Homo sapien, in an old mine on a desolate mountain in Morocco. Both the date of the fossils — skulls, limb bones and teeth from at least five individuals — and their location were surprises — “a blockbuster discovery.” [Source: Will Dunham, Reuters, June 8, 2017 ^]

Will Dunham of Reuters wrote: “The antiquity of the fossils was startling - a “big wow,” as one of the researchers called it. But their discovery in North Africa, not East or even sub-Saharan Africa, also defied expectations. And the skulls, with faces and teeth matching people today but with archaic and elongated braincases, showed our brain needed more time to evolve its current form. “This material represents the very root of our species,” said paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, who helped lead the research published in the journal Nature.

Country — Date — Place — Notes
Israel — 195,000 –177,000 years before present — Misliya Cave, Mount Carmel — Fossil maxilla is y older than remains found at Skhyul and Qafzeh, two other very old sites in Israrel. Layers dating from between 250,000 and 140,000 years ago in the same cave contained tools of the Levallois type which could put the date of the first migration even earlier if the tools can be associated with the modern human jawbone finds.
United Arab Emirates — 125,000 years before present — Jebel Faya — Stone tools made by anatomically modern humans
Oman — 75,000–125,000 years before present — Aybut — Tools found in the Dhofar Governorate correspond with African objects from the so-called 'Nubian Complex', dating from 75-125,000 years ago. According to archaeologist Jeffrey I. Rose, human settlements spread east from Africa across the Arabian Peninsula. [Source: Wikipedia]

Oldest in North Africa: Country — Date — Place — Notes
Morocco — 379,000–254,000 years before present — Jebel Irhoud — Anatomically modern human remains of eight individuals dated 300,000 years old, making them the oldest known remains categorized as "modern".
Libya — 50,000–180,000 years before present — Haua Fteah — Fragments of 2 mandibles discovered in 1953

First Humans Migrate from Africa to Asia via the the Middle East

180,000-year-old human Misliya Cave fossil from Israel

The fact that some of earliest evidence of modern humans outside of Africa s in Australia suggests that the early man followed a coastal route through the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia to Australia. It is believed that the migration was not a caravan-like journey but rather one in which some huts were set up on the beach and the migrants lived there for a while moving and then moved to a new location further to the east every couple of years. Traces of such a migration if it took place were covered in water and sediments when sea levels rose at the end of the Ice Age.

Some genetic evidence indicates that a group of 4,000 modern humans left Africa between 75,000 and 50,000 years ago and ultimately populated Asia. All non-Africans share genetic markers (the M168 marker in particular) carried by these early immigrants. The descendants of these people replaced all earlier types of humans, notably Neanderthals. All-non Africans are descendants of these people. The Onge from the Andaman Islands in India carry some of the oldest genetic markers found outside Africa.

Many scientists believe the migration took place rather late and humans that took part in it spread very far, very quickly, This theory is backed in part by the features of skulls of ancient modern men found in Europe, Asia and even Australia with those of the Hofmeyr skull found in South Africa in the 1950s and dated to be 33,000 to 42,000 years old. This finding was reported in a January 2007 article in the journal Science by team led by Frederick Grine at State University of New York at Stony Brook.

The route of the early migrants that populated the world is still a matter of speculation. They may have migrated out of Africa via the Red Sea and the Nile Valley to the Middle East or across the southern Red Sea, making their way across southern Arabia to the Persian Gulf. At that time an ice age narrowed the gap across the Res Sea between the Horn of Africa and Arabia to only a few kilometers. It was originally that these early migrants made their way eastward via the Sinai peninsula but many think they crossed the Bab el Mandeb Strait, separating Djibouti from the Arabian Peninsula.. The straits across the Persian Gulf between Arabia and west Asia was also shortened by the ice age.

The migrants seem to have stayed near the sea during much of the migration. That way they had acess to reliable sources of food in the form of fish and mollusks. Who knows they may have even used boats to follow the coast — a method many scientists theorize was used tens of thousands of years later to reach America. To reach Australia within the timeline of theory would have required an advance of about on kilometer a year.

The archaeological record indicates the migrants made it as far as India around 75,000 years ago. Tools found Jwalapuram, a 74,000-year-old site in southern India, match those used in Africa from the same period. Excavated by anthropologist Michael Petraglia of the University of Cambridge, the site until recently was the oldest known outside of Africa aside from Qafzeh and Skhul in Israel.

Some scientists feel the migration out of Africa was also accompanied by revolutions in behavior and technology such as more developed social networks and advanced tools and sophisticated language that gave them ability to prosper in new lands and in some cases drive out hominids that already lived there.

Northern Route Out of Africa

Modern humans first arose at least 300,000 years ago in Africa. When and how they dispersed from there has been controversial and a topic of fierce debate in the academic community, with geneticists suggesting the exodus started between 40,000 and 70,000 years ago but fossils, artifacts and archaeological evidence saying they left much earlier than that. The currently accepted theory backed up archaeological evidence is that the exodus from Africa followed the “southern route” along Arabia's shores, or possibly through its now-arid interior. Genetic evidence — and some archaeological evidence — supports the “northern route” theory that they traveled through modern-day Egypt, Israel-Palestine to Europe and Asia.

single and multiple migration waves into Asia

Saioa López, Lucy van Dorp and Garrett Hellenthal of University College London wrote: “Some of the earliest remains of Anatomically modern humans anywhere outside of Africa, the Skhul and Qafzeh hominins, were found in the Levant (present-day Israel) and dated to 120 and 100,000–90,000 years ago, respectively. It has been suggested that these fossils represent an early exit of modern humans approximately 120,000 years ago, traveling across the Sinai Peninsula to the Levant. The next human remains found in the region include the Manot1 cranium, which was dated to around 55,000 years ago, demonstrating a considerable gap in the fossil record of Anatomically modern human occupation in the Levant. This, in conjunction with climatic records, indicating a global glacial period 90,000 years ago, has led some authors to suggest that if the first humans did exit early via the Levant they did not survive, and that the Skhul and Qafzeh hominins are the remnants of this failed exodus. Other authors emphasize the possibility that this group could have already left the Levant before the glacial period 90,000 years ago. That said, the recent presentation of archeological material, primarily stone tools and assemblages dated to 100,000–80,000 years ago, from an empty corner of the Arabian Peninsula suggests early settlements may have been widely distributed and that even if Skhul and Qafzeh do represent a failed exodus, it was broader and more complex than previously thought. [Source: Saioa López, Lucy van Dorp and Garrett Hellenthal of University College London, “Human Dispersal Out of Africa: A Lasting Debate,” Evolutionary Bioinformatics, April 21, 2016 ~]

Oldest Known Human Fossil Outside Africa Discovered in Israel

A jawbone, including several teeth, recovered in a prehistoric cave site in Israel is the oldest modern human fossil found outside Africa, Hannah Devlin wrote in The Guardian: “A human upper jawbone fossil with several teeth and stone tools, dated to between 177,000 and 194,000 years old, were found in a cave in Israel, meaning that modern humans left Africa far earlier than previously thought, prompting scientists to rethink theories about earllu human migration. The fossil is almost twice as old as any previous Homo sapiens remains discovered outside Africa. [Source: Hannah Devlin, The Guardian, January 25, 2018 |=|]

“The fossil, a well-preserved upper jawbone with eight teeth, was discovered at the Misliya cave, which appears to have been occupied for lengthy periods. The teeth are larger than average for a modern human, but their shape and the fossil’s facial anatomy are distinctly Homo sapiens, an analysis of the fossil in the journal Science concludes. |=|

possible migration routes through the Middle East

“Sophisticated stone tools and blades discovered nearby suggest the cave’s inhabitants were capable hunters, who used sling projectiles and elegantly carved blades used to kill and butcher gazelles, oryx, wild boars, hares, turtles and ostrich. The team also discovered evidence of matting made from plants that may have been used to sleep on. Radioactive dating places the fossil and tools at between 177,000 and 194,000 years old. “Hershkovitz said the record now indicates that humans probably ventured beyond the African continent whenever the climate allowed it. “I don’t believe there was one big exodus out of Africa,” he said. “I think that throughout hundreds of thousands of years [humans] were coming in and out of Africa all the time.” |=|

“Reconstructions of the ancient climate records, based on deep sea cores, show that the Middle East switched between being humid and extremely arid, and that the region would have been lush and readily habitable for several periods matching the age of the Misliya fossil.” |=|

177,000-Year-Old Israeli Human Fossils and Out of Africa Theory

The earliest modern human fossil ever found outside of Africa suggests that modern humans left Africa at least 50,000 years earlier than previously believed. Hannah Devlin wrote in The Guardian: “Until recently, several converging lines of evidence – from fossils, genetics and archaeology – suggested that modern humans first dispersed from Africa into Eurasia about 60,000 years ago, quickly supplanting other early human species, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, that they may have encountered along the way. |=|

“However, a series of recent discoveries, including a trove of 100,000 year-old human teeth found in a cave in China, have clouded this straightforward narrative. And the latest find, at the Misliya cave site in northern Israel, has added a new and unexpected twist. “What Misliya tells us is that modern humans left Africa not 100,000 years ago, but 200,000 years ago,” said Prof Israel Hershkovitz, who led the work at Tel Aviv University. “This is a revolution in the way we understand the evolution of our own species.”

“The discovery also raises intriguing questions about the fate of the earliest modern human pioneers. Genetic data from modern-day populations around the world strongly suggest that everyone outside Africa can trace their ancestors back to a group that dispersed around 60,000 years ago. So the inhabitants of the Misliya cave are probably not the ancestors of anyone alive today, and scientists can only speculate why their branch of the family tree came to an end. |=|

“Prof David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard University and an expert in population genetics and ancient DNA, said: “It’s important to distinguish between the migration out of Africa that’s being discussed here and the “out-of-Africa” migration that is most commonly discussed when referring to genetic data. This [Misliya] lineage contributed little if anything to present-day people.” “These early exits are sometimes termed ‘unsuccessful’ or ‘failed’,” said Stringer. “Some of these groups could have gone extinct through natural processes, through competition with other humans, including later waves of modern humans, or they could have been genetically swamped by a more extensive 60,000 year old dispersal.” |=|

Misliya Cave, Mount Carmel, Israel

Huts and Balls in Paleolithic Jordan and Israel

In 2012, Archaeology magazine reported: The transition from hunting and gathering in the Paleolithic period to sedentary agricultural lifestyles in the Neolithic may have been a long process, according to a research team working at Kharaneh IV, a 20,000-year-old site in Jordan. There, archaeologists uncovered the remains of two huts and plant and animal remains that show the site was occupied continually across a thousand-year time span — but only for several months at a time.

The landscape is arid today, but back then it was grassland that provided stable food sources, including herds of gazelle, wild cereal grains and other plants, and small stands of trees that provided more food and hut-building materials. The study builds on evidence from other sites in Jordan and Israel. "We can actually say now, with evidence, that there was a widespread pattern of people staying put in larger groups, and starting to build the environment around them," says Lisa Maher of the University of California, Berkeley, one of the lead archaeologists on the project. [Source: Zach Zorich, Archaeology magazine, May-June 2012]

In 2020, Archaeology magazine reportedl: Hand-size stone balls have been found at numerous early Paleolithic sites around the world, but their exact purpose has baffled experts. Microscopic analysis of wear patterns and bone residues on the surface of examples found in Qesem Cave has indicated the spheres may have been shaped and used by humans between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago to crack open animal bones. Experimental trials using replicas demonstrated just how efficient these tools would have been at accessing bone marrow, which was nutrient-rich and much sought-after. [Source: Archaeology magazine, July- August 2020]

Meat Eaten by Paleolithic Humans in Israel and Jordon

In 2016, Archaeology magazine reported: Stone tools dating back to around 250,000 a million years have yielded the oldest known protein food residues ever observed and are providing insight into the diet of ancient hominins who would have been living in an increasingly arid and marginal environment. On the menu were rhinoceros, wild cattle, horses, and ducks. This surprising diversity — and the range of hunting techniques it would have required — suggests, according to the researchers, an adaptability that would have served Middle Pleistocene hominins well as they dispersed across Eurasia’s highly variable landscapes. [Source: Samir S. Patel, Archaeology magazine, November-December 2016]

Qesem Cave in central Israel has yielded what hominins ate from 420,000 to 200,000 years ago. According to the New York Times” Inside, ancient humans once butchered fresh kills with stone blades and barbecued meat on campfires. One of the researchers who worked couldn’t resist trying some marrow that these archaic modern humans consumed. “It is like a bland sausage, without salt, and a little stale,” said Jordi Rosell, an archaeologist at Rovira i Virgili University in Spain. “I can say that its taste was not bad, perhaps a little more rancid in the last weeks, but not bad.”

There is some evidence that early modern humans in Israel ground flour, which increased the “nutritional power” of basic meals common to nomadic populations. In study published in October 2010 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Archaeologist Ofer Bar-Yosef of Harvard University said early Israelis made flour at least 15,000 years and maybe earlier. Bar-Yosef said he hopes archaeologists will now pay more attention to residues embedded in grinding slabs.“It will help us to create a balanced view of Paleolithic diets of prehistoric humans,” he said. “This may have an impact on suggestions made by nutritionists concerning a meat rich diet as a way for prolonging healthy life.”

Evidence of a Stone-Age Meat Locker in Israel

Qafzeh skull from Israel

Not every meal consumed Qesem Cave was consumed immediately after a hunt. Ran Barkai, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel, and his colleagues have found that the cave’s earliest inhabitants may have also stored animal bones filled with marrow that they consumed for up to nine weeks after the kill. “It was believed that early hominins were consuming everything they could put their hands on immediately, without storing or preserving or keeping things for later,” said Barkai, author of a study published in Science Advances in October 2019. [Source: Nicholas St. Fleur, New York Times, October 9, 2019]

Nicholas St. Fleur, New York Times, The finding may be the earliest example of prehistoric humans saving food for later consumption, and may also offer insight into the abilities of ancient humans to plan for their future needs. Dr. Barkai’s team examined cut marks on nearly 82,000 animal fragments from Qesem Cave, most belonging to fallow deer. The researchers noticed unusual, heavy chop marks on the ends of some leg bones known as the metapodials. The chop marks “make no sense in terms of stripping off the bone, because at this part of the bone there is no meat and very little fat,” Dr. Barkai said. Usually, stripping the hide from a fresh bone requires minimal force, he said. But the heavy chops indicated that the processing used more force than should have been necessary. “We had a hypothesis that these unusual chop marks at the end of the meatless bones had to do with the removal of dry skin,” he said. But why were they doing that?

The team concluded that the ancient hominins, who shared features with Homo sapiens and Neanderthals but were probably neither, were removing dry skin on the bones to get to the marrow. That presented another question: If they were after marrow, why not just remove it from the bone when it was fresh? The researchers hypothesized that the chop marks were an indication that the early humans stored the bones so they could eat the marrow later.

To test their idea, the team collected freshly killed deer leg bones and then stored them for several weeks in conditions similar to those inside the cave. After every week, they would break open a bone and analyze the marrow to see how nutritious it still was. Every time, a researcher would remove the dried skin using a flint flake and then hammer open the bone with a quartzite tool, similar to what the ancient people would have had used. The researcher wasn’t given instructions on how to open the bone.

The team found that the researcher’s chop marks on the older leg bones with dried skin were similar to what they saw in Qesem Cave. “It was a surprise when we realized that the same marks were generated experimentally,” said Ruth Blasco, a zooarchaeologist at the National Research Centre on Human Evolution in Spain and lead author on the study. “The Qesem hominids have demonstrated very modern behavior in their livelihood strategies.” Their chemical test showed that after nine weeks, the fat in the bone marrow degraded only a little and was still nutritious.

Jessica Thompson, an archaeologist at Yale University, said the paper was a creative approach to reconstructing a past behavior that is notoriously difficult to identify in the archaeological record. “Their experimental work does a lot to convince me that some of the bones were not very fresh when they were processed, although it is still not clear how common this behavior was,” Dr. Thompson said. Briana Pobiner, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, praised the study and said that if this removal of dry skin did leave a unique butchery mark, “it’s now up to us zooarchaeologists to look for these traces in older fossil assemblages to see if we can document a greater antiquity of this food storage behavior.”

60,000-Year-Old Knives From Israel Give Insights into How Early Humans Butchered Animals

child skull from Qafzeh, Israel

Stone knives, dated to be 60,000 years old, found in sediments once along a lake in Israel give insights into how early hunter-gatherers butchered animals . The Miami Herald reported: The discovery was made at the Nahal Mahanayeem Outlet (NMO), a site along the left bank of the Jordan River, and consists of well-preserved animal remains and stone tools, according to a study published in Scientific Reports by the Catalan Institue of Human Paleocology and Social Evolution. [Source: Moira Ritter, Miami Herald,, February 1, 2023]

After a team of archaeologists worked to excavate the site, researchers carried out in-depth analysis of the stone tools to learn more about how they were used, the institute said. The study — which was led by Juan Ignacio Martin-Viveros, a researcher with the Catalan institute — analyzed wear marks on the edges of the tools to determine how they were used. The team of researchers concluded that unlike other remains that have been discovered from the same period, the tools found at NMO were uniquely made before the camp was set up and were not used for hunting, breaking from traditional understanding, according to the study.

Instead, early hunters used the cutting tools primarily for butchering large game, but also for “hide-processing, bone-scraping, and wood/plant processing,” the study said. The creation of the tools before reaching NMO exemplifies a “high level of planning and anticipation,” offering a new and unique look into prehistoric life and suggesting that early humans had a great cognitive capacity, researchers said. The Nahal Mahanayeem Outlet is located along the Jordan River near the Hula Valley in Israel’s northeast region.

120,000-Year-Old Cattle Bone Carvings from May Be World’s Oldest Surviving Symbols

In 2021 archaeologists announced they had found a 120,00-year-old bone fragment — engraved with six lines — at the site of Nesher Ramla in Israel. The researchers determined that a right-handed craftsperson created the markings in a single session and suggested in may be a work of art of least a symbol of some sort., The discovery was made by scholars from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Haifa University and Le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and published the journal Quaternary International in February 2021. “It is fair to say that we have discovered one of the oldest symbolic engravings ever found on Earth, and certainly the oldest in the Levant,” says study co-author Yossi Zaidner of the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology. “This discovery has very important implications for understanding of how symbolic expression developed in humans.”[Source: Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post, Isis Davis-Marks, Smithsonianmag.com, February 8, 2021]

Rossella Tercatin wrote in the Jerusalem Post: “Because the markings were carved on the same side of a relatively undamaged bone, the researchers speculate that the engravings may have held some symbolic or spiritual meaning. Per the statement, the site where researchers uncovered the fragment was most likely a meeting place for Paleolithic hunters who convened there to slaughter animals. [Source: Rossella Tercatin,Isis Davis-Marks, Smithsonianmag.com, February 8, 2021]

Isis Davis-Marks wrote in Smithsonianmag.com, “The bone in question probably came from an auroch, a large ancestor of cows and oxen that went extinct about 500 years ago. Hunters may have used flint tools — some of which were found alongside the fragment — to fashion the engravings. Researchers used three-dimensional imaging and microscopic analysis to examine the bone and verify that its curved engravings were man-made, reports the Times of Israel. The analysis suggested that a right-handed artisan created the marks in a single session. “Based on our laboratory analysis and discovery of microscopic elements, we were able to surmise that people in prehistoric times used a sharp tool fashioned from flint rock to make the engravings,” says study co-author Iris Groman-Yaroslavski in the statement. [Source: Isis Davis-Marks, Smithsonianmag.com, February 8, 2021]

Scholars are unsure of the carvings’ meaning. Though it’s possible that prehistoric hunters inadvertently made them while butchering an auroch, this explanation is unlikely, as the markings on the bone are roughly parallel — a methodical feature not often observed in butchery marks, per Haaretz’s Ruth Schuster. The lines range in length from 1.5 to 1.7 inches long. “Making it took a lot of investment,” Zaidner tells Haaretz. “Etching [a bone] is a lot of work.”

“Archaeologists found the bone facing upward, which could also imply that it held some special significance. Since the carver made the lines at the same time with the same tool, they probably didn’t use the bone to count events or mark the passage of time. Instead, Zaidner says, the markings are probably a form of art or symbolism. “This engraving is very likely an example of symbolic activity and is the oldest known example of this form of messaging that was used in the Levant,” write the authors in the study. “We hypothesize that the choice of this particular bone was related to the status of that animal in that hunting community and is indicative of the spiritual connection that the hunters had with the animals they killed.”

“Scholars generally posit that stone or bone etchings have served as a form of symbolism since the Middle Paleolithic period (250,000–45,000 B.C.). But as the Times of Israel notes, physical evidence supporting this theory is rare. Still, the newly discovered lines aren’t the only contenders for the world’s earliest recorded symbols. In the 1890s, for instance Dutch scholar Eugene Dubois found a human-etched Indonesian clam shell buried between 430,000 and 540,000 years ago. Regardless of whether the carvings are the first of their kind, the study’s authors argue that the fragment has “major implications for our knowledge concerning the emergence and early stages of the development of hominin symbolic behavior.”

skeleton of a woman found at Quafzeh cave in Israel

Neanderthals Lived Alongside Humans in Israel and the Middle East

Neanderthals lived in Israel as well as Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, and Iran. No Neanderthal skeletal remains have ever been found to the south of Jerusalem, and although there are Middle Palaeolithic Levallois points in Jordan and in the Arabian peninsula, it is unclear whether these were made by Neanderthals or by modern humans. [Source: Wikipedia]

Although their presence in the Middle East is not well-dated, early Neanderthals occupied the region apparently until about 100,000 years ago. For a time they lived side by side with modern humans. As modern humans migrated out of Africa around this time they appear to have replaced Neanderthals. In turn, starting around 80,000 years ago, Neanderthals seem to have returned and replaced Homo sapiens in the region. Asia. They inhabited the region until about 55,000 years ago.

In the Middle East, Neanderthals have left well-preserved skeletal remains in present-day Israel, Palestine, Syria, and Iraq. Remains in Turkey, Lebanon, and Iran are fragmentary. One of the southernmost Neanderthals fossils was found at Tabun Cave in Israel. It was dated to 120.000-50.000 B.C..

Neanderthals and Humans Appear to Have Had Sex and Interbred in Israel

Archeologists believe that Neanderthal and modern humans lived side by side in the Nahal Mea'rot (Cave River) nature reserve in a coastal mountain range of modern-day Israel. None of the bones uncovered at Nahal Me'arot - a World Heritage site - had lethal wounds which suggested prehistoric men lived in peace with each other 80,000 years ago. [Source: Daily Mail, 29 September 2012]

Neanderthals and humans lived side by side and appear to had sex and interbred with them. Stone axes and sharp flint arrowheads of both Neanderthals and modern humans have been discovered in limestone caves in northern Israel. The fact that modern mans carry some Neanderthal (suggests the two species had to have had sex. Genetic studies have indicated that modern Europeans got between 1 and four per cent of their genes from Neanderthals. The genes are thought to have spread through modern humans when small groups of pioneers who left Africa met and had sex with Neanderthals already long at home in Eurasia. Oldest genome sequence of a modern human suggests Homo sapiens first bred with Neanderthals 50,000-60,000 years ago |=|

Archeologist Daniel Kaufman told James Hilder of The Times that he believed peaceful cross-breeding between Neanderthals and modern humans was more likely the result of a consensual encounter than a rape attack. Kaufman said: 'If that interbreeding did take place, it must have been here.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons except Saudi finger bones, CNN, Zhiren Cave fossils, Science Daily, Middle East migration routes, researchgate

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated April 2024