Tinshemet Cave: 3 Homo lineages overlapped 110,000 years ago for 50,000 years in Israel (Neanderthal, Sapiens, Mystery lineage)

 Although these groups were physically different from one another, researchers weren't sure how similar they were in terms of lifestyle.

 Evidence from Tinshemet Cave in Israel suggests behavioral uniformity across Homo groups in the Levantine mid-Middle Palaeolithic circa 130,000–80,000 years ago,”

the human remains were buried in fetal positions, often with the red mineral pigment ocher, which prior research suggested was linked with funerary practices and symbolic thought. The scientists also discovered bones of large game such as aurochs (Bos primigenius, an extinct cowlike species), horses, deer and gazelles.

"The discoveries at Tinshemet Cave are probably going to be the most important finds in the region from the last 50 years," Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London who was not involved in the new study, told Live Science.

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Zaidner and his colleagues focused on Tinshemet Cave about 6 miles (10 kilometers) away from Nesher Ramla. Scientists first discovered the cave in 1940, and new excavations there unearthed five burials belonging to Homo — the first such burials from the mid-Middle Paleolithic found in this region in more than 50 years. It's currently unknown if these burials belong to early modern humans, human-Neanderthal hybrids, the mysterious other lineage or another group entirely.

 The finding reveals that Neanderthals, modern humans and related human lineages coexisted in what is now Israel for about 50,000 years. However, it's unknown which group influenced the other and in what direction....The researchers suggest that different groups of Homo not only coexisted in the mid-Middle Paleolithic in the Levant, but shared a number of key practices, exchanging innovations such as burial rites and the symbolic use of ocher for about 50,000 years.

Instead, he [Stringer] suggested the burials and artifacts at the Tinshemet, Skhul and Qafzeh caves are linked only with H. sapiens, and that different behaviors discovered at later Levant sites such as the Kebara, Amud and Dederiyeh caves are linked with Neanderthals.

"That said, there is growing evidence that these populations overlapped in the region about 100,000 years ago more than has been supposed, and given what happened in Europe 50,000 years later, there was clearly potential for contact and both cultural and genetic exchanges," Stringer said. "I've tended to play down the possibility that the Skhul and Qafzeh samples show signs of hybridization with Neanderthals, but they do show a lot of morphological variation, and some of it could indeed be an indication of interbreeding with Neanderthal neighbors."

  "I agree it seems increasingly likely, then somewhere there must be actual first-generation Neanderthal-sapiens hybrids waiting to be discovered or recognized," Stringer added.