A recent scientific paper published in Nature focusing on the analysis of a partial human skull provides substantial evidence for the “Out of Africa” theory.

The skull — also referred to as a calvarium — was discovered in 2008 when excavators expanding a sewage line accidentally poked through the roof of a cave which had remained sealed for the past 30,000 years.

The morphological characteristics of the fossil skull were analyzed fairly quickly. The results suggest that it was closely related to modern Africans and Upper Paleolithic Europeans.

However, it’s taken several years to precisely date the skull to 55,000 years old using Uranium-thorium dating.

This is the first fossil evidence that modern humans and Neanderthals coexisted in Israel 55,000 years ago, and possibly interbred. This evidence also fits the genetic and archaeological models for the dispersal of modern humans in waves out of Africa instead of evolving on the way to Europe or in Europe.

All these conjectures were gleaned from one partial skull found in a cave that still has more secrets to uncover.

SFU professor of archaeology Francesco Berna, who worked with the archaeological team on analyzing the calvarium, has been conducting further work at the Manot Cave in Israel where the skull was discovered.

“When you get into the cave, you need a minute to adjust because it’s very dark,” he explained.

The cave is large with steps leading down and huge columns of stalactites and stalagmites extending from floor to ceiling. Excavations take place every year inside the cave, from which researchers remove sediments to process and clean bones and artifacts.

By analyzing the mineralogy from the sediments, Berna is trying to see “how they are built up and how the humans used the cave.” This allows him to see natural processes, and human actions like trampling and making fire.

Meg Thibodeau, an MA student whose main interest is how early humans made and used fire, assisted Berna last year in the Manot cave with sediment analysis.

As an archaeologist, the most exciting thing for Berna was when his predictions concerning how humans used the cave and where they made fire coincided to where they actually did. “You feel so excited, everything starts to make total sense” he said.

Berna plans to continue working on this cave with the team in order to find more clues regarding when the Upper Paleolithic began. “If we can get to the Middle Paleolithic to Upper Paleolithic transition, it will be fantastic. That will be a major discovery,” he said.