Prehistoric Human Skull, Qafzeh, Israel, 2001

This 100,000-year-old skull was found in a cave in Qafzeh, Israel, along with other fossils, including a horse tooth and burned flints. Cutting-edge techniques were used to date the fossils—revealing that modern humans left Africa much earlier than had been thought, even coexisting with Neanderthals, once believed to be our ancestors.

(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "How Old Is It?" September 2001, National Geographic magazine)

Photograph by Robert Clark