Sapiens and Neanderthals coexisted in prehistoric Israel, rare cave burials show

Some 100,000 years ago, a group of hominins shared hunting strategies, tool manufacturing tips and how to honor the dead, performing complex and highly symbolic rituals, according to a recent analysis of rare findings from Israel’s Tinshemet Cave.

Located in central Israel, near Shoham, the Tinshemet Cave was active for millennia during the period known as Middle Paleolithic, 130,000 to 80,000 years ago. The findings include the first complete prehistoric human skeletons uncovered in Israel since the 1960s, which researchers say are among the best preserved in the world.

“This is one of the most interesting sites for Paleolithic research and human evolution in Israel,” Prof. Yossi Zaidner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told The Times of Israel in a phone interview in conjunction with the publication of an academic paper on Tuesday. “It sheds light on an incredibly rich culture of symbolic and ritual behaviors, especially in connection with burials.”

While researchers have yet to determine what type of hominins are buried in the caves, the site has already provided unique insights into their social life in prehistoric Israel.

“If we consider this cave in conjunction with other Middle Paleolithic sites in our region, we get to an unprecedented understanding of how different hominins interacted,” Zaidner said.

The cave presented a wealth of ochre, fauna, and stone tools, which offer important hints at how its inhabitants lived and died.

Nephilim were ‘giants’. Neanderthals were shorter but heavier than the typical Sapiens.

There is a midrash that says the world was created and destroyed 974 times before the first Adam. Those worlds varied in their resemblance to the Creation as now known, thus ‘explaining’ Nephilim, Repaim, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and perhaps other remnants similar to Sapiens.

The following:

"At the end of the day, I think that those Middle Paleolithic hominins were not concerned about how different they looked," he said.

And:

“However, I believe that this aggressive streak only emerged among humans after the agricultural revolution,” he said.

Are simply nonsense.

Look at the indigenous populations of New Guinea: very small groups, very primitive, very warlike with some cooperation. They literally wear distinctive headdresses and pigments to distinguish one group from another. Recognizing who your kith and kin are is essential to your survival.

Could have humans and Neanderthal groups cooperated? Of course, particularly with trade of small objects carried from to group or good stone for knapping. But here would have been plenty of fighting.

The only thing that changed with the agricultural revolution was the scale of warfare, which could now be organized much more thoroughly with much larger groups.

The rest of the Paleolithic keyword, sorted:

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