Were Early Humans at War in the Levant 100,000 Years Ago?

More than 100,000 years ago, a man was buried at Skhul Cave with a massive hole in the back of his skull and a penetrating mark at his hip. The original excavators believed a hardwood spear caused the hip injury. Could he have been struck from behind while lying down? And what caused the damage to his head?

Skhul 9 was not the only early Homo sapiens from the Levant with a troubling mark on his bones. A woman buried at the same site, Skhul 7, had a groove on her femur that the excavators compared with his injury. At Qafzeh Cave, another man survived a sharp cut across his jaw that reached a tooth. Together, these fossils raise a disturbing question about conflict among some of the earliest human pioneers outside Africa.

We examine what the bones show, where the interpretations differ, and whether these people were part of the ancestry of later populations. A study of ancient blood-group genes adds a final mystery: could variants found in much younger Eurasians already have circulated among the people of Skhul and Qafzeh? Their blood types remain unknown.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Skhul 9: a hole in the skull and a mark at the hip
00:48 The early human pioneers of the Levant
01:46 What happened to Skhul 9’s head?
02:36 The proposed hardwood spear injury
03:26 Skhul 7 and the similar mark on her femur
04:11 Injury during life or damage after death?
05:04 Skhul, Qafzeh, and the human crossroads
05:59 Qafzeh 25: a sharp injury that healed
07:36 Does the evidence reveal a pattern of conflict?
08:32 Could these people be among our ancestors?
09:27 The ancient blood-group study
10:19 The missing genomes between Skhul and later Eurasians
11:13 Can the blood-group variants actually be dated?
12:11 Could those variants be much older?
13:59 Blood-group similarities with Neanderthals
14:54 What the fossils can—and cannot—tell us
16:34 The unanswered question in their blood

Timestamps are approximate and should be adjusted to the finished narration.

SOURCES

McCown and Keith, The Stone Age of Mount Carmel, Volume 2 (1939). Original descriptions and drawings of Skhul 7 and Skhul 9:
https://fada.birzeit.edu/bitstream/20...

Pantoja-Pérez and colleagues, “A taphonomic reassessment of Qafzeh 25 and its implications for violence, health and funerary practices” (2026):
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-58...

Coqueugniot and colleagues, “Earliest Cranio-Encephalic Trauma from the Levantine Middle Palaeolithic” (2014). Discusses the original interpretation of Skhul 9’s skull injury:
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone....

Churchill and colleagues, “Shanidar 3 Neandertal rib puncture wound and paleolithic weaponry” (2009). Presents a competing interpretation of Skhul 9’s hip mark as excavation damage:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2009...

Grün and colleagues, “U-series and ESR analyses of bones and teeth relating to the human burials from Skhul” (2005):
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2005...

Mazières and colleagues, “Rapid change in red cell blood group systems after the main Out of Africa of Homo sapiens” (2025):
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-83...