THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS SPECIES:

A recent re-examination of artifacts collected from Israel's central Negev desert has revealed important details about the development of human culture in the region, according to a new study published in the journal PNAS. Precise archaeological dating techniques of artifacts from the Boker Tachtit site have shifted the known timeline of the arrival of modern humans to about 50,000 years ago. This would make Boker Tachtit the oldest modern human settlement in the Levant, and means that early Homo sapiens occupied the region at the same time as the Neanderthals. [...]

One of the most notable consequences of the study was its verification that modern humans and Neanderthals were present in the central Negev desert at the same time. "This goes to show that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in the Negev coexisted and most likely interacted with one another, resulting in not only genetic interbreeding, as is postulated by the 'recent African origin' theory, but also in cultural exchange," Boaretto and Barzilai theorized in a Weizmann Institute press release announcing their discoveries.

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