Qesem Cave
Archaeological site
Qesem Cave (Hebrew: מערת קסם) is a Lower Paleolithic archaeological site near the city of Kafr Qasim in Israel. The site was occupied by early humans from about 400,000 to about 200,000 years ago.
The karstic cave attracted considerable attention in December 2010, when reports suggested Israeli and Spanish archaeologists had found the earliest evidence yet of modern humans. Science bloggers pointed out that the media coverage had inaccurately reflected the scientific report.
Selective large-game hunting was regularly done followed by butchery of desired carcass parts for transport back to a residence for food sharing and cooking. The cave was found in October 2000 during road construction. Its deposits contain stone tools and animal remains from the Acheulo-Yabrudian complex.
Description
The cave exists in Turonian limestone in the western mountain ridge of Israel between the Samaria Hills and the Israeli coastal plain. It is 90 m above sea level and about 12 kilometers from the east coast of Mediterranean Sea.
Deposits at the site are 7.5 m (25 ft) deep, and are divided into two layers: the upper is about 4.5 m (15 ft) thick, and the lower 3 m (10 ft).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Qesem Cave” as archaeological site. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as archaeological site. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q24252. VIAF identifies the subject as 316747237. Authority coordinates are 32.110, 34.980. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Qesem Cave” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.