During the 1930s, excavations at Skhul Cave , situated on the slopes of Mount Carmel, Israel, unearthed a spectacular series of ten hominin skeletons dating to approximately 100,000 to 130,000 years ago . When physical anthropologists first analyzed these remains alongside those from neighboring caves, they were confronted with a baffling anatomical enigma. The Skhul fossils displayed a bizarre, highly variable mixture of archaic Neanderthal-like robustness and gracile modern human architecture,