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Qafzeh |
Qafzeh or Kafzeh is a paleoanthropological site at Mount Kafzeh south of Nazareth, Israel. Since 1933, eleven significant fossilised Homo sapiens skeletons have been found at the main rock shelter and nearby Skhul cave. These anatomically modern humans, both adult and infant, are now dated to circa 90-100,000 years old, and many of the bones are stained with red ochre which is conjectured to have been used in the burial process, a significant indicator of ritual behavior and thereby symbolic thought and intelligence. 71 pieces of unused red ochre also littered the site.
From 1930 to 1932, at Mount Carmel, Israel, Dorothy Garrod excavated Neanderthal and early modern human remains in the Carmel Caves of Tabun (Israel), El Wad (Algeria), Es Skhul, Shuqba (Shuqbah) and Kebara [1].
In the excavation from 1933 René Neuville, T. McCown and H. Movius, Jr. discovered the remains of two anatomically modern humans, and by the time of Andrew Moore's publication in 1977 the remains of eleven different skeletons had been recovered. Prior to 1989, the skeletons were thought to be about 50,000 years old.1
The Skhul 9 remains are both unique and controversial [2]. They appear to be a modern looking skull with archaic features, specifically mandibular prognathism (jutting lower jaw) and supraorbital ridges (brow ridges). They are sometimes described as having an "early modern" or "nearly modern" anatomy. Some have conjectured that this may show cross-breeding between anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals. Whereas others view the remains as being consistent with an early expansion of modern humans from Africa being more closely related to African fossils such as the Omo remains. Neanderthal remains have been found a short distance away at the Tabun and Kebara Caves along with Mousterian tools, a type often associated with Neanderthals.
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