Did This Skull Belong to a Neanderthal-Human Hybrid?

Outside a small cave in Israel in 1928, archaeologists discovered what many still believe is the oldest human cemetery in the world. Laid out in shallow graves were the partial remains of seven adults and three children who lived an estimated 140,000 years ago during an age known as the Middle Pleistocene. 

Very quickly, the archaeologists realized that these weren’t your typical human skeletons. One skull in particular grabbed their attention. It belonged to a young child, likely a girl, between 3 and 5 years old. Her skull was badly damaged, but archaeologists were able to connect it with a nearby jawbone, or mandible.  

The two pieces clearly belonged to the same body but appeared to come from two different species. The skull conformed to the expected shape of a modern human (Homo sapiens), but the jaw was a different story altogether—it looked just like a Neanderthal’s.  

Theodore McCown, who excavated the site now known as Skhūl Cave in the 1930s, described the mysterious remains as individuals “in the throes of evolution”—evidence of two ancient human species competing for genetic dominance.  

According to a July 2025 investigation conducted nearly a century later, that’s exactly what the Skhūl child was—a “hybrid” human that could add new chapters to the story of human evolution.  

Anne Dambricourt Malassé is a paleoanthropologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. She led the international team of researchers who re-examined the skull of the Skhūl child using CT scans—a technology that didn’t exist a century ago.  

“The missing parts of the mandible and skull had been reconstructed with plaster,” says Malassé in an email. Using CT scans, Malassé could see not only the original bones, but also their internal structure.  

In the decades since the ancient cemetery’s discovery near Haifa in northern Israel, most scientists concluded that the Skhūl child was Homo sapiens and that her oddly shaped jaw was a normal genetic variation, not evidence of cross-breeding (hybridization).  

Supporting that conclusion was a widely held belief—practically dogma—that only Homo sapiens were intelligent enough to bury their dead.  

To Malassé’s astonishment, the Skhūl child was exactly what you’d expect to see from a child born to parents from two different species—one Homo sapiens and the other Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis).  

“The bones at the base of the skull that position the neck...and the bones of the inner ear (the labyrinth) are typically Homo sapiens,” says Malassé. “The mandible, on the other hand, is typically Neanderthal—it has no chin, the dental arch is rounded and wide, and the part that attaches to the skull base is much less vertical.” 

But couldn’t the “odd” looks of the Skhūl child still be the product of normal genetic variation within the Homo sapiens species? Is she irrefutably a human-Neanderthal hybrid?  

“Genes control the formation of the bones of the inner ear and mandible in the fetus,” says Malassé. “The control is different in Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. [In the Skhūl child,] Homo sapiens genes formed the inner ear and Neanderthal genes formed the mandible. So she's a hybrid.”  

Scientists have long known that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred. The proof is right in our DNA. For humans of non-African ancestry, between 1 and 4 percent of their genome can be traced back to Neanderthals. The percentages are even higher—6 to 9 percent—for humans who lived outside of Africa 40,000 years ago.  

Because of its location, northern Israel circa 140,000 years ago would have been an active crossroads for different species of ancient humans from Africa, Europe and Asia. Israel Hershkovitz, one of Malassé’s collaborators, found that Neanderthals arrived in the region of Israel (known as the Levant) around 400,000 years ago, while Homo sapiens didn’t appear until 200,000 years ago.  

The Skhūl Cave, located in the Mt. Carmel Mountains of northern Israel, appears to be one such place where the two species overlapped and formed close bonds. Ancient burial plots in the nearby Galilee region date to roughly the same period.  

“If [the Skhūl Cave] cemetery is that of a single clan, it was predominantly Homo sapiens, but there were obviously unions with Neanderthals,” says Malassé.  

It was long believed that Neanderthals lacked the cognitive capacity to intentionally bury their dead, and that the rituals of human burials belonged exclusively to the brainier Homo sapiens. But an increasing number of archaeological finds have thrown that assumption into question.  

In 2021, a separate research team from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris published evidence indicating that a young Neanderthal child was intentionally buried in a French cave 40,000 years ago. Her body was carefully arranged with her head raised, and the remains appear to have been protected from scavenging animals.  

In the 1950s, excavations inside Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan found Neanderthal skeletons with nearby clumps of pollen that may have been flowers left in the tomb.  

For Malassé, the Skhūl child is one more powerful piece of evidence refuting the idea that Neanderthals were too primitive to care for their dead.  

“This changes the certainty that Homo sapiens, with a brain more developed than the Neanderthal, was the first to have such a particular funeral rite to dig the earth and bury the body,” says Malassé. “We don't know who buried this little girl, but I have no doubt that one of her parents was Neanderthal."