That was possible some 55,000 years ago in modern-day Israel, archaeologists announced this weeka find that they say could be significant, since it could shed light on when and how our modern-day ancestors moved from Africa into Europe and Asia.
It’s all based on the discovery of portions of a skull (including the top but not the jaw) in Manot Cave in western Galilee detailed in a study published Wednesday in Nature.
The specimen “is unequivocally modern” and is “similar in shape to recent African skulls as well as to European skulls,” according to the report from a team of researchers from the University of Tel Aviv, Ben-Gurion University, Israel Antiquities Authority and elsewhere.
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Yet in comments to Discovery News, Stringer also acknowledged that “Manot might represent some of the elusive first migrants in the hypothesized out-of-Africa event about 60,000 years ago, a population whose descendants ultimately spread right across Asia and also into Europe.”
Stringer said, “It is the first modern human from western Asia that is well dated to the estimated time frame of interbreeding between early modern humans and Neanderthals.”
