Manot 1

Manot 1 is a partial skullcap from an early modern human, found in Manot Cave in the Western Galilee region of Israel. The fossil was uncovered in 2008, and the formal scientific description came out in 2015. Based on radiometric dating, it is roughly 54,700 years old, placing it in the middle of the Mousterian period. Researchers consider it a likely early modern human but have not confirmed it as directly ancestral to the Upper Paleolithic populations that later lived in the Levant and Europe.

The cave itself was discovered by accident in 2008 when a bulldozer broke through its roof during construction. Archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Cave Research Unit were alerted and conducted an initial survey. Inside, they found the skullcap along with stone tools, charcoal fragments, and other human remains. The tool assemblage included a Levallois point, burins, bladelets, overpassed blades, and early Ahmarian tools. Animal remains from the site included fallow deer, red deer, mountain gazelle, horse, aurochs, hyena, and bear. The team reported the find to the Israel Antiquities Authority, which authorized a brief follow-up survey. A full-scale excavation began in 2010, led by a collaboration of researchers from Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, the Geological Survey of Israel, the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, the Kimmel Center for Archaeological Sciences at the Weizmann Institute, and Boston University’s Department of Archaeology.

The Manot 1 specimen is an adult, represented by a nearly complete skullcap that closely resembles those of modern humans. However, its estimated brain size is about 1,100 mL, notably smaller than the modern average of roughly 1,400 mL. Distinctive features include a bun-shaped occipital region, a moderate arch of the parietal bones, a flat sagittal area, a suprainiac fossa, and a pronounced superior nuchal line. These traits place it somewhere between the most recent African humans and Upper Paleolithic Europeans, while also differing from other archaic humans found in the Levant. The discoverers concluded that the overall shape and discrete morphological features of the skullcap show it is unequivocally modern, with no evidence of Neanderthal admixture in its morphology.