ESR dates for the hominid burial site of Es Skhul in Israel
- PMID: 2541339
- DOI: 10.1038/338756a0
ESR dates for the hominid burial site of Es Skhul in Israel
Abstract
The Middle East has been critical to our understanding of recent human evolution ever since the recovery of Neanderthal and early anatomically modern fossils from the caves of Tabun and Skhul (Mount Carmel) over 50 years ago. It was generally believed, on archaeological and morphological grounds, that middle eastern Neanderthals (such as those from Tabun, Amud and Kebara) probably dated from more than 50,000 years ago, whereas the earliest anatomically modern specimens (from Skhul and Qafzeh) probably dated from about 40,000 years. Recent thermoluminescence and electron spin resonance (ESR) determinations, however, have supported biostratigraphy in dating the Qafzeh deposits to an earlier part of the late Pleistocene, probably more than 90,000 years ago. These dates have been questioned on unspecified technical grounds, and it has also been argued that they create explanatory problems by separating the morphologically similar Qafzeh and Skhul samples by some 50,000 years, thus implying a long-term coexistence of early modern humans and Neanderthals in the area. Here we report the first radiometric dating analysis for Skhul, using ESR on bovine teeth from the hominid burial levels. Early uptake and linear uptake ages average 81 +/- 15 and 101 +/- 12 kyr respectively. These analyses suggest that the Skhul and Qafzeh samples are of a similar age and therefore it is possible that the presence of early modern humans in the area was episodic, rather than long-term during the early late Pleistocene.
Similar articles
-
Mass-spectrometric U-series dates for Israeli Neanderthal/early modern hominid sites.Nature. 1993 May 20;363(6426):252-5. doi: 10.1038/363252a0. Nature. 1993. PMID: 8387643
-
U-series and ESR analyses of bones and teeth relating to the human burials from Skhul.J Hum Evol. 2005 Sep;49(3):316-34. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2005.04.006. J Hum Evol. 2005. PMID: 15970310
-
The role of western Asia in modern human origins.Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 1992 Aug 29;337(1280):193-200. doi: 10.1098/rstb.1992.0097. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 1992. PMID: 1357694
-
Direct dating of human fossils.Am J Phys Anthropol. 2006;Suppl 43:2-48. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.20516. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2006. PMID: 17103430 Review.
-
A critical review of the German Paleolithic hominin record.J Hum Evol. 2006 Dec;51(6):551-79. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2006.04.014. Epub 2006 Jul 25. J Hum Evol. 2006. PMID: 17014890 Review.
Cited by
-
Out-of-Africa, the peopling of continents and islands: tracing uniparental gene trees across the map.Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2012 Mar 19;367(1590):770-84. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2011.0306. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2012. PMID: 22312044 Free PMC article. Review.
-
Geographical structure of the Y-chromosomal genetic landscape of the Levant: a coastal-inland contrast.Ann Hum Genet. 2009 Nov;73(Pt 6):568-81. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-1809.2009.00538.x. Epub 2009 Aug 16. Ann Hum Genet. 2009. PMID: 19686289 Free PMC article.
-
Colloquium paper: working toward a synthesis of archaeological, linguistic, and genetic data for inferring African population history.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 May 11;107 Suppl 2(Suppl 2):8931-8. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1002563107. Epub 2010 May 5. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010. PMID: 20445100 Free PMC article.
-
Resolving seasonal rainfall changes in the Middle East during the last interglacial period.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Dec 10;116(50):24985-24990. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1903139116. Epub 2019 Nov 25. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019. PMID: 31767759 Free PMC article.
-
Comparing fitness and drift explanations of Neanderthal replacement.Proc Biol Sci. 2019 Jun 12;286(1904):20190907. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2019.0907. Epub 2019 Jun 12. Proc Biol Sci. 2019. PMID: 31185865 Free PMC article.
Publication types
MeSH terms
LinkOut - more resources
Full Text Sources
Miscellaneous
