Misliya cave

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View of the remains of the cave (center) from a distance
Abri up close

The Misliya Cave is an archaeological site on the western slope of the Carmel Mountains in Israel , near Wadi Sefunim, 12 kilometers south of Haifa and around seven kilometers north of the Tabun and Skhul sites . According to a dating from 2018, the oldest fossil of anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) outside of Africa was discovered in the cave .

location

The cave - today a multi-part Abri - is located at the foot of a 17 to 20 meter high limestone cliff facing west / southwest, around 95 meters above sea level. Numerous large boulders below the cave and other clues are interpreted to mean that originally there was a large, deeper cave, the outer areas of which have collapsed. Only three niches a few meters deep in the rock face and the terraces in front of them have been preserved.

Embedded in breccias or in softer sediment material, stone tools of the Levallois type that were dated to the Middle Paleolithic , but also older stone tools and numerous animal bones, some of which show traces of cuts , were found in various places within the abyss and below them . It has also been proven that parts of the original cave collapsed repeatedly during this period, but that it was inhabited again after such events.

The finds also include sea shells of the species Glycymeris nummaria , which were brought into the cave by the inhabitants around 200,000 years ago.

Research history

Mina Weinstein-Evron next to one of the niches in the rock face

The cave was initially known as the Brotzen Cave , as it was first scientifically mentioned in 1927 by Fritz Brotzen and Elise Jenny Baumgartel .

The cave is being explored in particular by Mina Weinstein-Evron ( University of Haifa ) and Israel Hershkovitz ( University of Tel Aviv ). The first pilot excavation took place in late 2000 / early 2001; however, surface finds had already been collected beforehand. The paleontological and archaeological finds date from between 400,000 and 150,000 years ago.

The Misliya-1 fossil

A particular finding is the left half of the upper jaw -Knochens with partially preserved palate bone of an adult human including resting in the jaw eight teeth ( wisdom tooth to canine , also root of an incisor ).

The fossil (archive number Misliya-1) could not be dated with certainty at first, but it was provisionally assigned an age of "possibly 150,000 years" and it was interpreted as the remnant of an early anatomically modern human ( Homo sapiens ). At the beginning of 2018, the age of the fossil and the accompanying archaeological finds were further narrowed down in the journal Science using different dating methods and the diagnosis of archaic Homo sapiens was confirmed. “The results suggest an age between 177,000 and 194,000 years and thus move the first migration of modern humans to Eurasia more than 60,000 years further into the past than assumed. This means that the Misliya fossil is roughly the same age as the first finds by early modern humans from two sites in East Africa. ”These finds, Omo 1 and Omo 2 and Homo sapiens idaltu from Ethiopia , are around 195,000 and 160,000 years old, respectively.

Dating was based on three methods, each carried out in different laboratories: uranium-thorium dating , combined uranium-thorium / electron spin resonance dating (US-ESR) and thermoluminescence dating . Specifically, thermoluminescence dating of nine flint finds with burn marks from the immediate vicinity of the fossil revealed an age of 179,000 ± 48,000 years. For the rock crust adhering to the fossil, the uranium-thorium dating showed an age of 185,000 ± 8,000 years, the uranium-thorium dating of dentin from the incisor remains, however, only showed an age of 70,200 ± 1,600 years. The combined US-ESR of the same tooth material showed an age of 174,000 ± 20,000. The paleontologist Madelaine Böhme , who was not involved in the research of the fossil find, attributed the deviating result of the uranium-thorium dating "to changes in the tooth piece after its fossilization".

According to the analyzes, the structure of the teeth differs significantly from that of the Neanderthals and other Middle Pleistocene fossils; In particular, the combination of the features of the incisor and canine is therefore only to be found in anatomically modern humans.

The upper jaw was preserved because parts of the cave collapsed about 160,000 years ago, so that it was buried under the rubble and preserved. The dating also confirms considerations that it was already at a very early point in time - u. a. during the Eem warm period , oxygen isotope level MIS 5 - a migration from Africa to Southeast Asia could have occurred.

literature

  • Mina Weinstein-Evron et al .: Introducing Misliya Cave, Mount Carmel, Israel: A new continuous Lower / Middle Paleolithic sequence in the Levant. In: Eurasian Prehistory. Volume 1, No. 1, 2003, pp. 31-55.
  • Mina Weinstein-Evron et al .: A Window into Early Middle Paleolithic Human Occupational Layers: Misliya Cave, Mount Carmel, Israel. In: Paleo Anthropology. 2012: 202–228, doi: 10.4207 / PA.2012.ART75
  • Hélène Valladas, Norbert Mercier, Israel Hershkovitz et al .: Dating the Lower to Middle Paleolithic transition in the Levant: A view from Misliya Cave, Mount Carmel, Israel. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 65, No. 5, 2013, pp. 585-593, doi: 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2013.07.005

Web links

Commons : Misliya Cave  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Israeli fossils are the oldest modern humans ever found outside of Africa. On: nature.com from January 25, 2018
  2. ↑ Yossi Zaidner and Mina Weinstein-Evron: Making a point: the Early Middle Palaeolithic tool assemblage of Misliya Cave, Mount Carmel, Israel. In: Before Farming. Volume 2012, No. 4, 2012, pp. 1–23, doi: 10.3828 / bfarm.2012.4.1
  3. ↑ Yossi Zaidner, Dotan pressure and Mina Weinstein-Evron: Acheulo-Yabrudian handaxes from Misliya Cave, Mount Carmel, Israel. In: Ax Age: Acheulian Tool-making from Quarry to Discard. New Approaches to Anthropological Archeology, 2007, pp. 243-66, ISBN 978-1-84553-138-6
  4. ↑ Reuven Yeshurun, Guy Bar-Oz and Mina Weinstein-Evron: Modern hunting behavior in the early Middle Paleolithic: Faunal remains from Misliya Cave, Mount Carmel, Israel. In: Journal of Human Evolution . Volume 53, No. 6, 2007, pp. 656-677, doi: 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2007.05.008
  5. ^ Daniella E. Bar-Yosef Mayer et al .: On holes and strings: Earliest displays of human adornment in the Middle Palaeolithic. In: PLoS ONE. 15 (7), 2020, e0234924, doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0234924 .
  6. ^ Fritz Brotzen and Elise Jenny Baumgartel : New Stone Age finds from the Carmel Mountains in Palestine, 1925–1926. In: Berlin museums. Reports from the Prussian art collections. Volume 48, 1927, pp. 119-122
  7. ↑ Human exodus may have reached China 100,000 years ago. On: newscientist.com from August 6, 2014, accessed on January 23, 2018
  8. ^ Israel Hershkovitz, Gerhard W. Weber, Rolf Quam et al .: The earliest modern humans outside Africa. In: Science . Volume 359, No. 6374, 2018, pp. 456–459, doi: 10.1126 / science.aap8369
  9. ^ Warren D. Sharp and James B. Paces: Comment on "The earliest modern humans outside Africa". In: Science. Volume 362, No. 6413, 2018, eaat6598, doi: 10.1126 / science.aat6598
    Israel Hershkovitz, Mathieu Duval, Rainer Grün et al .: Response to Comment on “The earliest modern humans outside Africa”. In: Science. Volume 362, No. 6413, 2018, eaat8964, doi: 10.1126 / science.aat8964
  10. ↑ The first modern humans left Africa much earlier than previously known. On: oe-journal.at from January 25, 2018
  11. ↑ When did modern humans leave Africa? On: sciencemag.org from January 26, 2018
  12. ↑ Traces of the oldest original migrants. On: faz.net from January 25, 2018
  13. ↑ Ryan J. Rabett: The success of failed Homo sapiens dispersals out of Africa and into Asia. In: Nature Ecology & Evolution. Volume 2, 2018, pp. 212-219, doi: 10.1038 / s41559-017-0436-8

Coordinates: 32 ° 44 ′ 28.8 "  N , 34 ° 58 ′ 20.8"  E