Scientists have uncovered the world’s oldest evidence of human-Neanderthal interbreeding: a 140,000-year-old child from Israel’s Skhul Cave.
The fossil shows a unique blend of traits, revealing that humans and Neanderthals were mixing tens of thousands of years earlier than once believed.
Fossil Discovery Challenges Human Evolution Timeline
An international team of researchers from Tel Aviv University and the French National Centre for Scientific Research has uncovered the earliest proof that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens formed close connections, both socially and biologically, in what is now Israel.
Their study centers on the skeleton of a five-year-old child unearthed nearly a century ago in the Skhul Cave on Mount Carmel. Dating back around 140,000 years, the fossil is the oldest known example of a human exhibiting a mix of traits from both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. For decades, these groups were considered entirely separate species.
The project was led by Prof. Israel Hershkovitz of Tel Aviv University’s Gray Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences and Anne Dambricourt-Malassé of the French National Centre for Scientific Research. The results were published in the journal l’Anthropologie.
Earliest Evidence of Human Hybrid Traits
According to the research team, “This discovery reveals the world’s earliest known human fossil showing morphological traits of both of these human groups, which until recently were considered two separate human species. The current study shows that the five-year-old child’s skeleton is the result of continuous genetic infiltration from the local—and older—Neanderthal population into the Homo sapiens population.”
An international study led by researchers from Tel Aviv University and the French National Centre for Scientific Research provides the first scientific evidence that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had biological and social relations, and even interbred for the first time, in the Land of Israel.
DNA Links Between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens
“Genetic studies over the past decade have shown that these two groups exchanged genes,” explains Prof. Hershkovitz. “Even today, 40,000 years after the last Neanderthals disappeared, part of our genome—2 to 6 percent—is of Neanderthal origin. But these gene exchanges took place much later, between 60,000 to 40,000 years ago.
“Here, we are dealing with a human fossil that is 140,000 years old. In our study, we show that the child’s skull, which in its overall shape resembles that of Homo sapiens—especially in the curvature of the skull vault—has an intracranial blood supply system, a lower jaw, and an inner ear structure typical of Neanderthals.”
Neanderthals in the Levant: A Much Deeper History
For years, Neanderthals were thought to be a group that evolved in Europe, migrating to the Land of Israel only about 70,000 years ago, following the advance of European glaciers. In a groundbreaking 2021 study published in the prestigious journal Science, Prof. Hershkovitz and his colleagues showed that early Neanderthals lived in the Land of Israel as early as 400,000 years ago.
This human type, which Prof. Hershkovitz called “Nesher Ramla Homo” (after the archaeological site near the Nesher Ramla factory where it was found), encountered Homo sapiens groups that began leaving Africa about 200,000 years ago—and, according to the current study’s findings, interbred with them.
The child from the Skhul Cave is the earliest fossil evidence in the world of the social and biological ties forged between these two populations over thousands of years. The local Neanderthals eventually disappeared when they were absorbed into the Homo sapiens population, much like the later European Neanderthals.
Cutting-Edge Technology Unlocks Ancient Secrets
The researchers reached these conclusions after conducting a series of advanced tests on the fossil. First, they scanned the skull and jaw using micro-CT technology at the Shmunis Family Anthropology Institute at Tel Aviv University, creating an accurate three-dimensional model from the scans.
This enabled them to perform a complex morphological analysis of the anatomical structures (including non-visible structures such as the inner ear) and compare them to various hominid populations. To study the structure of the blood vessels surrounding the brain, they also created an accurate 3D reconstruction of the inside of the skull.
The Skhul Child: The World’s Oldest Human-Neanderthal Hybrid
“The fossil we studied is the earliest known physical evidence of mating between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens,” says Prof. Hershkovitz. “In 1998, a skeleton of a child was discovered in Portugal that showed traits of both of these human groups. But that skeleton, nicknamed the ‘Lapedo Valley Child,’ dates back to 28,000 years ago—more than 100,000 years after the Skhul child.
“Traditionally, anthropologists have attributed the fossils discovered in the Skhul Cave, along with fossils from the Qafzeh Cave near Nazareth, to an early group of Homo sapiens. The current study reveals that at least some of the fossils from the Skhul Cave are the result of continuous genetic infiltration from the local—and older—Neanderthal population into the Homo sapiens population.”
Reference: “A new analysis of the neurocranium and mandible of the Skhūl I child: Taxonomic conclusions and cultural implications” by Bastien Bouvier, Anne Dambricourt Malassé, Marcel Otte, Michael Levitzky and Israël Hershkovitz, 14 June 2025, L’Anthropologie.
DOI: 10.1016/j.anthro.2025.103385
Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.
Follow us on Google and Google News.
22 Comments
I am almost ‘shocked’ to think that researchers were ‘surprised’ to discover that Homo sapiens interbred with other types. We all know what men like most – so why should ANYONE be surprised that humans interbred? If there’s a female around…
Didn’t any of them read Jean Aul’s books which flat out explained how the human woman was raped by a ‘Neanderthal’! Come on, open your mind!
And what do men like most? Please elaborate. I would say im “shocked” to see your true colors but im not.
Do you suggest that we accept Jean M. Auel’s Paleolithic porn novels, known for their inaccuracies, for anecdotal fiction instead of relying on facts?
It takes adults of two sexes to breed, sexes that both have evolved to enable it and hormonally like it. It also takes many attempts to breed, especially if the populations have diverged somewhat. It has been estimated that the later introgression into humans took place over 6,000 years where two populations coexisted, apparently in harmony.
Well, Ms. Auel was lambasted for her inaccurate portrayal of having Neanderthals and Homo sapiens existing concurrently never mind interbreeding, calling her books “prehistorically inaccurate” but now who has the last laugh? The author has been proven right.
You’ve got that backwards. More neanderthal women were raped as their genetics made it impossible for them to fight back.
Occupied Palestine, not “Israel”.
This cave is clearly on the north side of Israel. You just want to be a political cunt.
Potato, potatoe. “The Land of Israel (Hebrew: אֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל, Modern: Éretz Yisra’él, Tiberian: ʾEreṣ Yīsrāʾēl) is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious, and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine.” [Wikipedia]
I assume Hershkovitz wanted to make a Jewish reference, else Levant is the customary non-political, non-religious area designation for paleontologists.
I bet most scientists would be surprised that even a nonfiction novelist could find the skull, analyze its shape AND come up with an original explainatory. theory. 🙂
What novelist and what relevance?
And what do men like most? Please elaborate. I would say im “shocked” to see your true colors but im not.
Neanderthals were just Nephillim who were wiped out in the flood but some were still around after that.
This is a science news site, your attempt to inject a superstitious myth is not nice.
Neanderthal, it seems, were just Nephillim who were wiped out in the flood but some were still around after that. Just like the book tells us.
Not only that, the descendants of Nephillim were said to be in the levant, in Canaan, Lebanon and Syria, so this matches that.
I love how the story continues to change as they keep finding new evidence that disproves their last story.
Its all grand fiction created to make you believe anything but the real truth.
Thats a great description of the scientific process! changing the story when new evidence comes to light, instead of hanging on and justifying some cool stories from a few thousand years ago as the only possible explanation.
Who are “they” and “story” in your vague conspiracy theory?
As I noted in my own response, this is confirmation of recent finds. But the finds did change the timeline, how else could science find and accept facts of nature? “The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has been referred to while doing science since at least the 17th century. Historically, it was developed through the centuries from the ancient and medieval world. The scientific method involves careful observation coupled with rigorous skepticism, because cognitive assumptions can distort the interpretation of the observation. Scientific inquiry includes creating a testable hypothesis through inductive reasoning, testing it through experiments and statistical analysis, and adjusting or discarding the hypothesis based on the results.[1][2][3]” [Wikipedia]
There are times in a woman’s life when she enjoys sex; nothing quite like a husky male Neanderthal to keep the bed warm……………
There is always the possibility that such children were the result of deliberate social exchanges intended to preserve peace between the communities. Humans are very organized socially, a prime reason for the early success of our species and Neanderthals as well.
Assuming that social organization and cultural transmission played no role in the lives of even Homo Erectus, let alone Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis is unlikely.
Modern humans are very detailed organized socially, but earlier populations have changed organizations from small groups to – later – larger societies. The null hypothesis is that breeding happens with little or no social context (in, say, non-social species). But your likelihood hypothesis are well taken.
Now, the later interbreeding zone was stable, and this early interbreeding seems to have been peaceful as well. This support some sorts of social exchange, but forced pairing seems to be going against peacefulness. Conjugal slavery is mainly patriarchal and likely dominated after early matriarchal societies vanished, both being products of early settlements as human populations grew around 20,000 – 10,000 years ago.
The find does not “challenge human evolution timeline”, it supports recent genetic finds that there has been human gene introgression into Neanderthals around 100 – 200 kyrs ago. The direction suggests Neanderthals were the larger population in the mixing zone as Africans first started to migrate out of Africa and met an established local population. Conversely later Neanderthal gene introgression into humans suggests Neanderthal numbers were dwindling as they were subsumed into the larger population.
“The finding of ‘African’ haplotypes as young as 100,000 years old in the Altai Neanderthal genome is consistent with interbreeding around that age.” [Kuhlwilm, M., Gronau, I., Hubisz, M. et al. Ancient gene flow from early modern humans into Eastern Neanderthals. Nature 530, 429–433 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature16544%5D
“We estimate that Neanderthals have 2.5 to 3.7% human ancestry, and we leverage human-introgressed sequences in Neanderthals to revise estimates of Neanderthal ancestry in modern humans, show that Neanderthal population sizes were significantly smaller than previously estimated, and identify two distinct waves of modern human gene flow into Neanderthals.” [Liming Li et al. ,Recurrent gene flow between Neanderthals and modern humans over the past 200,000 years.Science385,eadi1768(2024).DOI:10.1126/science.adi1768]