Suspected 35,000-Year-Old Stone Age Ritual Site Found Deep Within Cave

A distinctive rock in the deepest part of a northern Israeli cave suggests the space may have been used for communal rituals about 35,000 years ago, according to a group of researchers that investigated the find.

The team’s findings—published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences—posit that communal rituals may have occurred around a carved boulder in the deepest, darkest part of Manot Cave.

The proposed ritual compound occupies a separate part of the cave from the living chambers. The chamber is filled with “a cluster of remarkable speleothems [mineral deposits],” the team wrote, as well as a standout boulder with engraved markings. The geometry of the carved boulder suggests a representation of a tortoise or turtle.

“It may have represented a totem or spiritual figure,” said Omry Barzilai, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa and the Israel Antiquities Authority, and leader of the team, in a Case Western Reserve University release. “Its special location, far from the daily activities near the cave entrance, suggests that it was an object of worship.”

Manot Cave was discovered in 2008, a chance find as workers built condominiums near the Israel-Lebanon border. In 2015, the first major finding emerged: a cranium in the cave that researchers dated to roughly 55,000 years ago, providing a timestamp of the cave’s occupation. The team concluded that “the Manot people could be closely related to the first modern humans who later successfully colonized Europe,” as they wrote in Nature.

The recent paper builds on that finding by adding a short-lived cultural dimension to the cave’s occupation. Neanderthals and other prehistoric humans didn’t merely hang out in the cave, the team concluded; they also brought in torches and took the time to carve a geometric pattern in a distinctive rock separate from the living quarters.

The team studied five stalagmites in different parts of the cave and found one (stalagmite #1048, if you’re curious) with evidence of soot residue. Carbon-rich particles in the stalagmite were dated to 36,000 years ago, with no earlier or later evidence of fire use found. Without any presence of an ancient hearth in the cave, the team concluded that fire was brought into the cave in the form of a short-lived fireplace or torches.

Caves are often filled with evidence of human habitation, as well as the overlapping geography of Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. Earlier this year, a group of scientists pushed back the arrival of humans in Mallorca based on a 6,000-year-old submerged rock bridge found in a cave on the island. Back in 2022, a different team of researchers reported on the occupation of Neanderthals and humans in the art-rich Cueva de Ardales in southern Spain.

Neanderthals disappear from the fossil record about 40,000 years ago; consensus is our nearest cousins didn’t die out, but were genetically subsumed by A wise man. Given the more recent age for fire use, it doesn’t seem like Neanderthals were responsible for lighting the chamber. But that doesn’t mean our ancient relatives—a much more complex group of people than once believed—didn’t have their own rituals. More studies of what’s left in Manot Cave could demystify the exact timeline of occupation in the Levantine cave.