Qafzeh

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Qafzeh or Kafzeh is a paleoanthropological site at Mount Carmel (Mount Kafzeh) south of Nazareth, Israel. Since 1933, eleven significant fossilised homo sapiens skeletons have been found at the main rock shelter and nearby Skhul cave. These anatomically modern humans, both adult and infant, are dated circa 90-100,000 years old, and many of the bones are stained with red ochre which is conjectured to have been used in the burial process, a significant indicator of ritual behaviour and thereby symbolic thought and intelligence. 71 pieces of unused red ochre also littered the site.

From 1930 to 1932, at Mount Carmel, Israel, Dorothy Garrod excavated Neanderthal and early modern human remains in the Carmel Caves of Tabun (Israel), El Wad (Algeria), Es Skhul, Shuqba (Shuqbah) and Kebara.[1]

In the excavation from 1933 Rene Neuville, T. McCown and H. Moivus, Jr. discovered the remains of two anatomically modern humans, and by the time of Andrew Moore's publication in 1977 the remains of eleven different skeletons had been recovered.

The Skhul 9 remains are both unique and controversial[2]. They appear to be a modern looking skull with Neanderthal features, specifically mandibular prognathism (jutting lower jaw) and supraorbital ridges (brow ridges). It is conjectured that this may show cross-breeding between anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals. Neanderthal remains have been found a short distance away at the Tabun and Kebara Caves along with Mousterian tools, the only tools known to have been used by Neanderthals, further indicating the possibility of seminal cultural interchange.