Some 120,000 years ago, in the dry, rugged hills of the Levant, something extraordinary began to happen. Deep inside caves, or at their rocky mouths, both Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens started doing something neither had done before as far as we can tell from the archaeological record. They began to bury their dead.
This was a leap toward a world filled with meaning and ritual. For archaeologists like Professor Ella Been and Dr. Omry Barzilai, who have spent years studying these burial sites, this moment represents a kind of forgotten revolution.
“The innovation of burial actually began in the Levant,” says Barzilai, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa. As they sift through the bones and ancient artifacts, these scientists are piecing together the early mysteries of death — and life.
This act, which might seem simple to us today, marked the dawn of a complex cultural shift in both species. Here’s the kicker though: this new research reveals that this innovation might have been more than just a way to honor the dead. It could have been tied to competition, territory, and survival.
A Shared, Yet Divided World
The Levant, a region that encompasses modern-day Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinian territories, was a cultural crossroads during the Middle Paleolithic. For tens of thousands of years, Homo sapiens and Neanderthals lived here side by side. They moved through the landscape, hunting, gathering, and perhaps sometimes encountering one another in ways we can only imagine (besides them having sex; current human DNA proves that happened).
But what the latest research from Been and Barzilai shows is that they may have shared more than just the land. They may have shared the beginnings of a culture of burial.
In their study, published in L’Anthropologie, the researchers combed through the remains of 32 ancient gravesites scattered across the Levant from around 120,000 years ago. Seventeen of these belonged to Neanderthals, and fifteen to Homo sapiens. What they found was striking: both species buried their dead — men, women, children, even infants. They even laid the bodies to rest with grave goods, from animal bones to shells, objects that may have carried deep meaning for the living.
Yet there were nuances. Neanderthals preferred burials deep in caves. And they often laid their dead in a variety of positions — sometimes curled up in a fetal pose, other times stretched out or semi-flexed. Their burials sometimes involved simple markers: stones placed near the body or even beneath the head, perhaps to serve as a kind of rudimentary pillow.
Homo sapiens, our ancestors, were more uniform in their approach. They favored cave entrances or rock shelters, with their dead almost always positioned in a tight, fetal position. Their graves often featured a splash of red ocher — an ancient pigment that might have symbolized something about the person’s identity or status. Shells, too, appeared in some Homo sapiens graves, likely carried from distant shores, perhaps to mark kinship or social ties.
Was This More Than a Burial?
But these burials may have been more than just a farewell to the dead. The Levant was a contested landscape — a place where resources were scarce and competition for survival was fierce. Caves, in particular, were precious. As the region’s population grew, driven by shifting climates and expanding fauna, competition between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens likely intensified.
This is where things get interesting. Barzilai and Been speculate that the act of burying the dead may have served a secondary purpose: marking territory. “A cave is an asset,” Barzilai told National Geographic. In a world where both species were competing for space and resources, burying a body inside a cave might have been a way of claiming it—not just for the dead, but for those who would return season after season.
It’s a provocative idea, one that turns the simple act of burial into a form of prehistoric land deed. As Graeme Barker, a Cambridge archaeologist who worked on the famous Shanidar Cave in Iraq, notes, “It’s clearly a way of marking the landscape.” The dead, in other words, could have been boundary markers in a high-stakes game of survival.
An Ancient Practice, A Sudden Silence
And yet, this ancient burial tradition was not to last. Around 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals disappeared from the Levant — one of the final acts in their slow extinction. Strangely, around the same time, human burials in the region also ceased. For thousands of years afterward, no one in the Levant buried their dead, as if the tradition had vanished along with the Neanderthals.
It wasn’t until the Natufian culture, some 15,000 years ago, that burials returned to the region. The Natufians, semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers, began burying their dead in new ways, creating a connection to the land that would set the stage for later agricultural societies.
Why did burials stop, and what might this say about the relationship between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens?
“It’s puzzling,” Been admits. “Burials are a significant part of culture. Why they suddenly stopped is a question that remains.”
The burials in the Levant, then, are not just a glimpse into the past. They are a reminder of the shared, yet distinct, paths that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals took. While both species buried their dead, the differences in their practices may reveal deeper insights into their minds, their rituals, and how they saw their place in the world.
As Been continues her research, now studying a baby Neanderthal from Israel’s Amud Cave, the questions surrounding these ancient burials only grow. Why did two species that were so different, and yet so similar, start this practice at almost the same time? Were they influenced by each other, or was it simply a product of survival in the Levant’s harsh landscape?
For now, the answers lie in the dirt of the Levant’s caves — buried, perhaps, but not forgotten.
