We Are All Israelis Now: Reframing the Right of Return

In what could change the whole picture of human evolution, archaeologists claim that modern man may have evolved in the West Asia, rather than Africa, after they discovered remains said to be 400,000 years old.

A team, led by Prof Avi Gopher and Dr Ran Barkai of the Tel Aviv University, has found eight human-like teeth in the Qesem cave near Rosh Ha’Ayin, 10 miles from Israel’s Ben Gurion airport.

The teeth were 400,000 years old, from the Middle Pleistocene Age, which would make them the earliest remains of homo sapiens yet discovered... _DeccaChronicle

JPostThe discovery of 400,000 year old teeth in Qesem Cave inside Israel, suggests that modern humans may have evolved in the middle east -- not in Africa as most anthropologists believe. This discovery can be added to a host of others which contradicts the common belief that all modern humans are descended from a branch of the human tree which evolved inside Africa.

Long before the land was called Israel and the residents Jews, Homo sapiens lived here twice as long ago as was previously believed, the researchers wrote in the latest (December) edition of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

The cave was uncovered in 2000 by Prof. Avi Gopher and Dr. Ran Barkai of TAU’s Institute of Archeology. Later, Prof. Israel Hershkowitz of the Department of Anatomy and Anthropology at TAU’s Sackler School of Medicine and an international team of scientists performed a morphological analysis on the teeth found in the cave.

The examination included CT scans and X-rays indicating the size and shape of the teeth are very similar to those of modern man. The teeth found in the cave are also very similar to evidence of modern man dated to around 100,000 years ago that had previously been discovered in the Skhul Cave on Mount Carmel and the Qafzeh Cave in the Lower Galilee near Nazareth.

The Qesem Cave is dated between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago, and archeologists working there believe that the findings indicate significant changes in the behavior of ancient man. This period of time was crucial in the history of mankind from cultural and biological perspectives, and the fact that teeth of modern man were discovered indicates that these changes are apparently related to evolutionary changes taking place at that time, they maintained. _JPost

If these findings are confirmed, they will throw a monstrous monkey wrench into anthropological discussions. One of the reasons the "out of Africa" viewpoint has been made official dogma, is that it unifies all of the branches of modern humanity. This makes it possible for educated people to say with a straight face that there is no difference in average intelligence or developmental potential between different populations of humans -- even though the best of modern science demonstrates very real differences.

Science moves forward, even when powerful interests wish otherwise.