Israeli fossils are the oldest modern humans ever found outside of Africa
Jaw and teeth mark Homo sapiens' early arrival on the Arabian Peninsula.
The oldest human fossils ever found outside Africa suggest that Homo sapiens might have spread to the Arabian Peninsula around 180,000 years ago — much earlier than previously thought. The upper jaw and teeth, found in an Israeli cave and reported in Science on 25 January1, pre-date other human fossils from the same region by at least 50,000 years. But scientists say that it is unclear whether the fossils represent a brief incursion or a more-lasting expansion of the species.
Researchers originally thought that H. sapiens emerged in East Africa 200,000 years ago then moved out to populate the rest of the world. Until discoveries in the past decade countered that story, scientists thought that a small group left Africa some 60,000 years ago and that signs of earlier travels, including 80,000–120,000 year-old skulls and other remains from Israel discovered in the 1920s and 1930s, were from failed migrations.
However, recent discoveries have muddied that simple narrative. Some H. sapiens-like fossils from Morocco that are older than 300,000 years, reported last year2, have raised the possibility that humans evolved earlier and perhaps elsewhere in Africa. Teeth from southern China, described in 20153, hint at long-distance migrations some 120,000 years ago. And genome studies have sown more confusion, with some comparisons of global populations pointing to just one human migration from Africa4,5, and others suggesting multiple waves6.
Early start
In the early 2000s, archaeologist Mina Weinstein-Evron, at the University of Haifa in Israel, and palaeoanthropologist Israel Hershkowitz, at Tel Aviv University, began a project to excavate a series of Israeli caves. “We called it ‘Searching for the Origins of the Earliest Modern Humans’. This was what we were looking for,” says Weinstein-Evron.
Their team discovered the jaw fragment in 2002, in Misliya Cave, the highest of Mt Carmel’s caves. It is just a few kilometres away from the Skhul cave, one of the sites where the 80,000–120,000-year-old remains were found in the 1920s and 1930s. Using several different methods, the team estimates the jaw and teeth to be 177,000–194,000 years old.
ISRAEL IS THE HOLY LANDD