Archaeologists have uncovered a cave used by pre-Neanderthals up to 400,000 years ago, making it one of only a few known sites from this little-understood period available for scientific study, CNN reported Monday.
The cave, located on the outskirts of Fureidis in northern Israel, was investigated ahead of planned construction work. Archaeologists in the 1970s believed it had been used around 200,000 years ago, according to archaeologist Kobi Vardi.
However, Vardi and his colleague Ron Shimelmitz, an associate professor of archaeology at the University of Haifa, have now determined that it was inhabited as far back as 400,000 years ago.
They reached this conclusion after uncovering flint tools—including hand axes, scrapers, and blades—typical of the Acheulo-Yabrudian culture of pre-Neanderthal hominins that lived in the region at the time.
Hominins refers to members of the human lineage that branched off from its last common ancestor with chimpanzees. Neanderthals, for instance, are an extinct branch of the human tree, not a direct ancestor of modern humans (though modern humans do have Neanderthal DNA from interbreeding).
Vardi said that "it was a big surprise" to discover the cave was much older than previously believed. It would have been occupied by members of the Acheulo-Yabrudian culture, who lived across the Levant, or Near East, between roughly 400,000 and 250,000 years ago.
The team also uncovered bones from animals including fallow deer and gazelle, suggesting that large groups of hominins lived together in the cave, hunted wild animals, and used fire.
