Manot cave

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The Manot Cave in September 2011

The Manot Cave ( Hebrew מערת מנות Me'ara Manot ) is an archaeological site in Western Galilee , Israel . It was opened accidentally in 2008 when the cave ceiling was destroyed by a bulldozer during construction work . During the first inspection of the cave, amateur speleologists became aware of the fossilized skull roof of a human (archive number: Manot 1 ), which was later dated to an age of 54,700 ± 5,500 years ( Cal BP ).

location

Plan of the cave with artifact clusters marked

The Manot Cave was created north of Haifa in a limestone formation and is today around 300 meters above sea level in a wooded hill country. The cave is 80 meters long and 10 to 25 meters wide. The two original entrances to the cave were closed by falling rock around 15,000 years ago. After that, her insides remained untouched by human influences.

Exploration

Three worked flint tips from the Manot cave
Two antlers prepared as tools

As the oxygen supply in the cave was insufficient, the cave was only explored for a single day immediately after its discovery. On this occasion, however, numerous stone tools lying on the surface, remains of charcoal and the fragment of the skullcap of an anatomically modern human ( Homo sapiens ) were discovered. It was also noteworthy that the stone tools partly showed features of the Levallois technique associated with the Neanderthals ( Homo neanderthalensis ) , but partly features of the aurignacia associated with anatomically modern humans .

From 2010, the first sighting was followed by excavations in several places, which uncovered other stone tools, antler poles used as tools and numerous bones of small and large animals. It has also been suggested that this cave was accessible for around 250,000 years.

Fossil finds

Skull roof

The special significance of the discovered hominid cranium is that the lifetime of this man in the same area also Neanderthals occurred and this - long suspected - simultaneous presence of both Homo - species in the Levant for the first time by a fossil of Homo sapiens has been demonstrated.

In the description of the skullcap published in Nature in January 2015 , it was discussed, among other things, that the people living around the cave 55,000 years ago may have belonged to the Homo sapiens population whose descendants later colonized Europe.

Teeth and foot bones

In 2020, the discovery of six hominine teeth and several bones of a left hominine foot were described for the first time in two publications, the age of which was put at 46,000 to 33,000 years. According to the studies, the foot bones could be assigned to Homo sapiens . The assignment of the teeth to Homo sapiens or Homo neanderthalensis , on the other hand, turned out to be difficult because no clear distinguishing features could be demonstrated.

literature

  • Omry Barzilai, Israel Hershkovitz, Ofer Marder: The Early Upper Paleolithic Period at Manot Cave, Western Galilee, Israel. In: Human Evolution. Volume 31, No. 1-2, 2016 pp. 85-100.

Web links

Commons : Manot Cave  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ewen Callway: Neanderthals gain human neighbor. In: Nature . Volume 517, 2015, p. 541, doi: 10.1038 / 517541a
  2. ↑ a b Israel Hershkovitz et al .: Levantine cranium from Manot Cave (Israel) foreshadows the first European modern humans. In: Nature. Volume 520, No. 7546, 2015, pp. 216–219, doi: 10.1038 / nature14134 , full text ( memento from March 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
    Fossil skull connects continents. On: idw-online.de from January 28, 2015.
  3. ↑ Omry Barzilai et al .: Manot Cave. In: Hadashot Arkheologiyot - Excavations and Surveys in Israel. Volume 124, 2012. The Israel Antiquities Authority, ISSN  1565-5334 , full text
  4. ^ Ofer Marder et al .: The Upper Palaeolithic of Manot Cave, Western Galilee, Israel: the 2011-12 excavations. In: Antiquity. Project Gallery article, No. 337, September 2013, full text
  5. ↑ Omry Barzilai et al .: Manot Cave, Seasons 2011–2012. In: Hadashot Arkheologiyot - Excavations and Surveys in Israel. Volume 126, 2014. The Israel Antiquities Authority, ISSN  1565-5334 , full text
  6. ^ Anthropology: Ancient skull from Galilee cave offers clues to the first modern Europeans. On: eurekalert.org of January 28, 2015.
  7. ↑ Sarah Borgel et al .: Early Upper Paleolithic human foot bones from Manot Cave, Israel. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Online advance publication of October 16, 2019, 102668, doi: 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2019.102668 .
  8. ↑ Rachel Sarig et al .: The dental remains from the Early Upper Paleolithic of Manot Cave, Israel. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Online advance publication of October 11, 2019, 102648, doi: 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2019.102648 .

Coordinates: 33 ° 2 ′ 6.5 ″  N , 35 ° 11 ′ 35.9 ″  E