FOLLOWING THE FOOTSTEPS OF HUMANKIND OUT OF AFRICA.

• Position: ARCHAEOLOGY

The Boker Tachtit archaeological excavation site in Israel's central Negev desert holds clues to one of the most-significant events in human history: the spread of modern humans, Homo sapiens, from Africa into Eurasia, and the subsequent demise of Neanderthal populations in the region.

Researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science (led by Prof. Elisabetta Boaretto), together with Omry Barzilai of the Israel Antiquities Authority, returned to Boker Tachtit nearly 40 years after it was first excavated. Using advanced sampling and dating methods, they offer a new chronological framework for this important chapter in our anthropological evolution. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, their study suggests that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals were far from strangers.

According to the "recent African origin" theory, Homo sapiens originated in Africa as recently as 270,000 years ago, and at different times took either the northern route to Eurasia, passing through the Levant, or several possible southern routes to remote corners of Asia and even Oceania--reaching as far as Australia by land.

Boker Tachtit, located in the Wadi Zin basin, in what today is the Ein Avdat National Park, is considered a key site for tracing this migration. It is a major site in the Levant for documenting an important period in humankind's prehistory: the transition from Middle to Upper Paleolithic--in other words, from a predominantly Neanderthal prehistorical culture to the beginning of modern humans' reign. This transition was marked by technological innovations such as blade production and the introduction of standardized tools made from bones and antlers.

American archaeologist Anthony Marks, who first excavated and published his analysis of Boker Tachtit in the early 1980s, defines the site as a transitional industry from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic and, based on a single radiocarbon date, concluded that it dates to 47,000 years ago. The problem, however, is that additional dates obtained from the site, some reaching 34,000 years ago, made the timing of the transition very problematic.

"If we are to follow this timeline, then...