Leg fragments found in Merat Amud were identified as the remains of a Neanderthal woman who lived in our area

The remains that were found, of a woman whose scientific name is "Page 9", are probably among the latest evidence known today for the existence of Neanderthal man in the Middle East and are at the same time as the appearance of modern man in Israel. In a new study led by Dr. Osborne Pearson from the University of New Mexico and Prof. Arala Hubers from the Hebrew University, the researchers state: "'Page 9' is a Neanderthal, but with a local garnet"

In an article published last month in the latest issue of the journal PaleoAnthropology The anatomy of the lower leg and foot parts found in the cave was studied in detail. The publication comes almost three decades after parts of the skeleton, including the leg, were found in Merat Amud in Nahal Amud in northern Israel. Now, although the find was not well preserved after being removed from the field, the researchers concluded based on measurements and multivariate statistical analysis that it was A rare remains of a Neanderthal woman who lived in this area about 55 thousand years ago.

The discovered Neanderthal woman stood 160-166 cm tall and weighed about 60 kg. Its scientific name is "page 9" - according to the order of identification of human bones in the cave. "Page 9" was a mature woman, but apparently she was not old when she died. The leg bones were discovered under a large rock that had collapsed from the ceiling of the cave, however, according to the evidence in the excavation, the collapse happened long after the bones were placed in place and was not the cause of her death.

The archaeological excavation during which the remains of the leg were found for the first time began in 1991 and ended in 1994. Remains of at least 15 human individuals, including a partial skeleton of a baby, were discovered at the site. The excavation was managed by Prof. Arala Hubers from the Institute of Archeology at the Hebrew University, Prof. Yoel Rak from the Department of Anatomy and Anthropology at the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, and William Kimball from the Institute for the Study of Human Evolution at the University of Arizona. The article that has just been published was led by Dr. Osborne Pearson from the University of New Mexico, who began his work on the find about a decade ago, together with Prof. Hubers and in collaboration with Prof. Rek. Another partner is Dr. Adrian Pablos from the National Center for the Study of Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain. Dr. Pearson and Dr. Pavlos specialize in limb bone surgery.

To understand the find from Amud Cave, the researchers used a large comparative database and described all the details of the foot they found. "Page 9", according to them, was different from the classic Neanderthals who lived in Europe in that her leg bones were more refined and in that she was apparently taller than what is known in Europe. For the most part, the feet of the Neanderthals were wide and clumsy and would probably have looked strange to a contemporary man. In addition, the ankle bone was similar to fossils that are closer to Homo sapiens who lived in our region about 100,000 years ago, and also to a human group that existed in Spain about 300,000 years ago. "'Page 9' is Neanderthal, but with a local touch", say the researchers וProf. Hubers explains: "Local populations existed in the eastern Mediterranean between 250 and 50 thousand years before our time, and groups of early modern humans from Africa and Neanderthals from Europe arrived there, probably more than once throughout the period. The level of interaction between the groups is not known to us in detail, since so far no remains have been found DNA A fossil nose from this period in our area. Many of the fossils found in sites from the period, including in Amud Cave, have a 'local touch' and differ slightly in anatomical aspects from each of these groups."

The human remains found in Merat Amud are probably the latest evidence known today for the existence of Neanderthal man in the Middle East, and are at the same time as the appearance of modern man in Israel. The inhabitants of Merat Amud were hunter-gatherers who lived in a relatively rich environment. They hunted deer, donkeys and other elk, sometimes wild goats and pigs, and collected a variety of plant foods, including wild species of local plants, which tens of thousands of years later, in the Neolithic period, underwent domestication processes. They made extensive use of fire, managed a complex raw material economy which probably also had social and cultural purposes, and buried at least some of their dead.

The archaeological evidence from all the sites from that period point to a relatively stable population that did not live under particularly stressful conditions. Climatic indicators from the site itself and from sites of the same time, in different places in the Mediterranean climate region and regional paleoclimatic works, do not indicate a dramatic climatic change that could have undermined the basis of their existence. "The reasons for the disappearance of groups with an anatomy similar to that of the Neanderthals must therefore be sought in other factors - social, demographic, and perhaps in the way they dealt with diseases that they were not exposed to before they met in our region with groups of African origin," explains Prof. Hubers.

for the scientific article

More of the topic in Hayadan:

• Researchers from Tel Aviv University found teeth of a modern man and a Neanderthal man from about 40,000 years ago in Menot Cave in the Galilee
• Special to the Science site: Did Neanderthal man and Homo sapiens unite in Israel?
• What caused the extinction of the Neanderthals?