Misliya Cave (), also known as the "Brotzen Cave" after Fritz Brotzen, who first described it in 1927, is a collapsed cave at

Mount Carmel Mount Carmel (; ), also known in Arabic as Mount Mar Elias (; ), is a coastal mountain range in northern Israel stretching from the Mediterranean Sea towards the southeast. The range is a UNESCO biosphere reserve. A number of towns are situat ...

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

, containing archaeological layers from the

Lower Paleolithic The Lower Paleolithic (or Lower Palaeolithic) is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 3.3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears ...

and

Middle Paleolithic The Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Palaeolithic) is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle P ...

periods. The site is significant in

paleoanthropology Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as hominization, through the reconstruction of evolutionary kinsh ...

for the discovery of the second-oldest (after Apidima Cave in Greece) known remains attributed to ''

Homo sapiens Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are Hominidae, great apes characterized by their Prehistory of nakedness and clothing ...

'' outside Africa, dated to 185,000 years ago.

Excavations

Excavations by teams of

University of Haifa The University of Haifa (, ) is a public research university located on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel. Founded in 1963 as a branch of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Haifa received full academic accreditation as an inde ...

and University of Tel Aviv were conducted in the 2000/1 season, yielding finds dated to between 300,000 and 150,000 years ago.

Misliya-1 fossil

Of special interest is the Misliya-1 fossil, an upper jawbone discovered in 2002, and at first dated to "possibly 150,000 years ago" and classified as "early modern ''Homo sapiens''" (EMHS). In January 2018, the date of the fossil has been revised to between 177,000 and 194,000 years ago (95% CI). This qualifies Misliya-1 as one of the oldest known fossil of ''H. sapiens'', of comparable age to the

Omo remains The Omo remains are a collection of homininThis article quotes historic texts that use the terms 'hominid' and 'hominin' with meanings that may be different from their modern usages. This is because several revisions in classifying the great apes h ...

(as well as those of Herto, identified as "archaic ''Homo sapiens''", or ''

Homo sapiens idaltu Herto Man refers to human remains (''Homo sapiens'') discovered in 1997 from the Upper Herto member (geology), member of the Bouri Formation in the Afar Triangle, Ethiopia. The remains have been dated as between 154,000 and 160,000 years old. The ...

''),''When did modern humans leave Africa?''
Auf: ''sciencemag.org'' vom 26. Januar 2018 and the second oldest modern humans ever found outside of Africa, the oldest being the skull Apidima 1 from the south western

Peloponnese The Peloponnese ( ), Peloponnesus ( ; , ) or Morea (; ) is a peninsula and geographic region in Southern Greece, and the southernmost region of the Balkans. It is connected to the central part of the country by the Isthmus of Corinth land bridg ...

dated to roughly 210,000 years ago. Prior to the discovery of Misliya, Jebel Faya in the

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a Federal monarchy, federal elective monarchy made up of Emirates of the United Arab E ...

had been considered to be the oldest settlement of anatomically-modern humans outside

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

, with its deepest assemblage being dated to 125,000 years ago. File:Gazelle upper jaw from Misliya Cave (early Middle Paleolithic).JPG, Gazelle upper jaw from Misliya Cave (early Middle Paleolithic)

References

External links

* Mina Weinstein-Evron et al.: ''Introducing Misliya Cave, Mount Carmel, Israel: A new continuous Lower/Middle Paleolithic sequence in the Levant.'' In: ''Eurasian Prehistory.'' Band 1, Nr. 1, 2003, S. 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.'' Band 65, Nr. 5, 2013, S. 585–593, doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2013.07.005 {{Authority control Caves of Israel Prehistoric sites in Israel Recent African origin of modern humans Paleoanthropological sites Mount Carmel

Excavations

Misliya-1 fossil

See also

References

External links