Skull discovery potentially housed brain like ours

An SFU archaeologist and graduate student have helped an Israeli-led scientific team discover our direct ancestors likely came from Africa or the Middle East and not Europe.

Francesco Berna, a Simon Fraser University assistant professor of archaeology, is part of an Israeli-led team of scientists that has unearthed major clues about the first modern humans in northern Israel.

A paper just published in Nature and co-authored by Berna documents the discovery of a 55,000-year-old, partial human skull with a distinctive modern human, bun-shaped "occipital" region, at Manot Cave in Western Galilee, Israel.

Berna and his colleagues believe this skull's date of origin and where it was found supports other evidence that our species actually evolved in Africa or in the Middle East. This new evidence contrasts with the hypothesis that the human species first evolved in Europe.

Berna helped the scientific team understand how ancient humans used Manot Cave at the time of this skull's origin and how the cave, its archaeological remains and the skull got to their present state.

Megan Thibodeau, one of Berna's graduate students, explored the use of fire in this cave. Their work is helping scientists confirm whether this skull is from the most recent evolution of anatomically modern humans, which showed up in Europe first, and eventually the rest of the world.

"The skull found at Manot is absolutely comparable to ours and different from other skulls of early modern humans previously found in Israel and dated to 100 thousand years ago," explains Berna. "This earlier group of humans had some slight anatomical differences from us.

"But, most importantly, they didn't produce stone tools, mobile sculptures, and cave paintings such as the one that our direct ancestor produced in Europe and the Middle East, starting at around 40,000 years ago. Earlier modern humans apparently hadn't yet developed our brain."