Kebara 2
Kebara 2 in situ
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| Catalog no. | KMH2 |
|---|---|
| Common name | Kebara 2 |
| Species | Homo neanderthalensis |
| Age | 64-59,000 years (TL and ESR) |
| Place discovered | Kebara Cave, Israel |
| Date discovered | 1983 |
| Discovered by | O. Bar-Yosef, B. Arensburg, and Bernard Vandermeersch |
Kebara 2 (or KMH2) is a 60,000 year-old Levantine Neanderthal mid-body male skeleton. It was discovered in 1983 by Ofer Bar-Yosef, Baruch Arensburg, and Bernard Vandermeersch in a Mousterian layer of Kebara Cave, Israel. To the excavators, its disposition suggested it had been deliberately buried, though like every other putative Middle Palaeolithic intentional burial, this has been questioned.
Kebara 2 is the most complete post-cranial Neanderthal skeleton ever found and has played a major role in three debates on Neanderthal anatomy and behaviour, namely the anatomical constraints of childbirth, their ability to speak, and the shape and size of their chests. The first of these debates it has helped settle, the second it has not, and the third it has sparked by questioning the barrel-shape that Neanderthal chests were thought to have since they were described by Hermann Schaaffhausen in 1858.
It is currently held at Tel Aviv University.
Valladas et al. (1987) obtained a thermoluminescence age of 61-59,000 years for Kebara 2's layer, congruent with Schwarcz et al. (1989) who found an age of 64-60,000 years by electron spin resonance.
The skeleton is male, but because it preserved a nearly complete pelvis, it helped settle in the negative the debate as to whether Neanderthals had different obstetrical (childbirth-related) constraints than those of modern humans.
Kebara 2 was the first Neanderthal specimen for which the hyoid bone was preserved, a bone found in the throat and closely related to the vocal tract. Its anatomy was virtually identical to a modern one, leading the excavators to controversially suggest that Neanderthals had at least part of the physical requirements for speech. This debate was hotly divisive, with some authors taking the similarities of Neanderthal and modern hyoid bones to mean that Neanderthal had vocal skills comparable to modern humans, and others pointing out that pigs too have hyoid bones similar to those of modern humans. If indeed Neanderthals could speak, they might have had a narrower-than-modern range of vocal sounds, since the skull base of some Neanderthals resembles those of modern human infants more than adults. (The consensus today is that Neanderthal behaviour is too complex to be explained without at least some form of basic language.)
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