The skull of a 5-year-old girl, a 140,000-year-old find discovered in the Skhul Cave on Mount Carmel, likely belongs to a hybrid child of a Neanderthal and Homo sapiens. This is evidenced by the results of a new study by an international team of scientists, which could change our understanding of interspecies contacts of ancient humans, as well as the first organized burial in history. This is reported by New Scientist, according to UNN.
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The child's remains were discovered back in 1929 during archaeological excavations of a group burial, which found seven adults, three children, and bones belonging to a total of 16 individuals, later attributed to the Homo sapiens species. However, the origin of the child's skull has caused controversy for almost a century, particularly due to the unusual structure of the lower jaw for sapiens.
The new study, conducted by scientist Anne Dambricourt-Malassé from the Institute of Human Paleontology in France and her colleagues, is based on CT scans of the skull and its comparison with the remains of Neanderthal children. Scientists found clear Neanderthal features in the jaw, while the rest of the skull shows typical Homo sapiens anatomy.
This study provided the first scientific basis for analyzing the remains of the child from Skhul. Earlier reconstructions were made in plaster and did not allow for an adequate comparison of this child with others
The combination of the listed features indicates the hybrid origin of the child, although she lived only 5 years. Previously, it was believed that hybridizations were not viable.
However, not all scientists are ready to draw final conclusions without DNA analysis, which is currently impossible to conduct. Skeptics argue that human populations have great internal variability. Therefore, external features can be misleading without genetic confirmation.
Modern genetic studies confirm numerous cases of gene exchange between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals over the past 200,000 years. Thus, in 2018, a 90,000-year-old bone fragment from Russia was identified, belonging to a Neanderthal-Denisovan hybrid.
The Levant region, where the skull was found, was likely an important meeting place for different species due to its geographical location between Africa, Asia, and Europe. Researchers do not rule out that interspecies contacts, communities, and even rituals could have arisen here.
We don't know who buried this child, whether it was one community or representatives of several lineages that coexisted, interacted, and perhaps united. But we see that emotions and rituals were already part of the human experience then
New results force scientists to reconsider the traditional attribution of the oldest burial exclusively to Homo sapiens, leaving open the question of who initiated the first memory rituals.