Archaeologists Discover Missing Link in Human Evolution, in Israel and The Israeli Supermarket Where You Can Shop for Free By Abigail Klein Leichman and Arab Caught with Treasure Trove of Archeological Artifacts
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
The Israeli Supermarket Where You Can Shop for Free By Abigail Klein Leichman
Photo Credit: Courtesy: Shani and Osher Shukrun
The store in central Israel where thousands of people in need go shopping for free in a respectful experience.
A few years ago, Shani Shukrun began matching people up on Facebook. Not for romantic purposes, but to bring together people in need with donors who could help them.
Each time, she'd raise 300 to 400 shekels ($95-$127) for a weekend shop for a family in need, or store dry goods in an extra room for someone to come and get.
"But in 2020, my daughter Oreen was born," recalled Shukrun, now 27. "She was born a preemie weighing 1.5 kilos at the height of the COVID pandemic, and I was really worried about people coming inside the house. So we decided to rent a place that we'd turn into a supermarket, and that way it would also be more respectful toward people and help them not feel ashamed."
Shukrun and her husband, Osher, found a little storeroom in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikvah, through which they managed to dispense food and other items to thousands of families. But as their venture grew bigger, along with their rent, they decided to move into new facilities.
They recently opened their brand-new, inviting-looking free supermarket in the city.
Shani and Osher Shukrun
"We put up shelves and made it look like a supermarket so that it would be nice for people to come in and so they don't feel like they're venturing into some alleyway to collect food. We're trying to make it very neat so that it will feel nice to take things off the shelves."
Shukrun's clientele comes in once or twice a month by invitation, which she sends out via designated WhatsApp groups. This way, the place isn't flooded, and as many people in need as possible get to equip themselves and their families.
"I don't ask them for any papers. Whoever tells me they're in need is welcome to come," she said. "I see them. It's not as if anyone's turning up in their Lamborghinis or Mercedes," she added.
A Jewish value
"If someone reaches out to me, then I need to give him or her assistance," said Shukrun. "That's part of the Jewish education I received at home."
The only rule in the free store is to take only one item of each kind.
"That's the limit. But you can take from whatever you want—blankets, oil, rice, dish soap, milk, snacks. It's not done out of stinginess, but to help as many people as possible. Although of course I don't check anyone's basket," said Shukrun.
All the products at the free store are neatly displayed to make the shopping experience as pleasant as possible.
"We get a lot of single mothers, people who got fired during COVID and haven't found themselves since," she said of the store-goers. "A lot of elderly people, a lot of people with disabilities—populations that have a little harder time getting by."
People hear about the free store mostly by word of mouth, though "we've also gone on TV a couple of times, and we have a Facebook group with some 15,000 members," she said.
Some of the "Making Hungry Children Happy" Facebook group members use the initiative's services, while others are donors. Some found themselves moving from one end to another.
"There are people who used to be our donors and suddenly became destitute, people who used to donate every month and suddenly turn to me. It happens a lot and you see it and it crushes your heart. I wish for everyone to always be on the giving side," said Shukrun.
Truckloads of goods
The initiative is completely funded by private donors, whose contributions are used to buy supplies and transport them to the store. There are also donations from vendors, who show up with truckloads of goods.
All the money that goes into the initiative goes directly toward supplies, Shukrun stressed, noting that she and her husband—a caregiver for the elderly and a plumber, respectively—don't take a salary. Neither do the few volunteers who help them, mostly ahead of holiday seasons when the NGO sends out hundreds of food baskets.
"I hardly sleep," Shukrun admitted. "Every spare moment, we're at the storeroom, tidying up supplies, working with vendors, checking emails and making phone calls. We take the baby everywhere with us and kind of do everything."
The dream, she says, is to see the initiative grow and spread cross-country.
"I want every city in the country to have a free supermarket run by our initiative. That's my biggest ambition," she said.
"I could have said that my biggest dream would be to close the place down and that there'll no longer be people in need. But I want to be realistic. There's always the poverty line and those above it and those below it."
For more details on how to contribute, contact Shani Shukrun via email or on Facebook.
Archaeologists Discover Missing Link in Human Evolution, in Israel
A hominin died in Jordan Valley 1.5 million years ago – and isn't the same species as the hominins who reached central Asia 1.8 million years ago. Israeli archaeologists prove there were multiple exits from Africa,and by more than one human species
The site at Ubeidiya.Credit: Dr. Omry Barzilai / Israel Antiquities Authority Ruth Schuster
About 1.5 million years ago, a child died near the Sea of Galilee. All that remains of the youngster is a single bone, a vertebra. But that skeletal fragment, first unearthed in 1966 and only now recognized for what it actually is – the earliest large-bodied hominin found in the Levant – changes the story of human evolution.
Among other things, that one bone proves for the first time that there were multiple exits by archaic humans from Africa. At 1.5 million years of age, the bone is the second-oldest hominin fossil to be found outside Africa. The oldest date to 1.8 million years ago and were found in Dmanisi, Georgia, and that difference of about 300,000 years proves in and of itself that there was more than one exit.
More? This archaic child in the Jordan Valley and the hominins at Dmanisi were not the same species.
The study on the vertebra, which is by far the oldest hominin fossil in Israel, was published Wednesday in Science Reportsby an international team led by Dr. Alon Barash of the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine of Bar-Ilan University, Prof. Ella Been of Ono Academic College, Prof. Miriam Belmaker of the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Omry Barzilai of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Ecce homo?
The story of the bone begins in 1959, when a member of Kibbutz Afikim named Izzy Merimsky was bulldozing land in preparation for agriculture and, Barash explains, suddenly observed that his machine was unearthing human bones, including a skull and teeth.
No, those did not belong to the ancient child. We don't know what they were because they were hopelessly out of archaeological context, Barash explains. They could be incredibly ancient or from some recent local flare-up. Maybe one day that will be cleared up.
Anyway, being archaeologically aware, Merimsky called in the authorities. Excavation began in 1960 and it became clear that the site was deeply prehistoric. Subsequently, in 1966, the archaeologist Moshe Stekelis unearthed the vertebra in situ that would change the story of human evolution. But not right away.
Said vertebra had been found with animal bones. "For some reason," Barash says, "it was placed in a box marked 'Homo?' – with the question mark – and forgotten. It was ignored. It was put with monkey bones."
Moving onto the 2020s and University of Tulsa paleoanthropologist Miriam Belmaker, who was working with the Antiquities Authority's Barzilai on reconstructing the paleoclimate at prehistoric Ubeidiya, and embarking on the tortuous process of trying to date the site with accuracy. "It's a work in process," Barash observes.
In the hope of resolving the dating conundrum, Belmaker reanalyzed all the animal fossils found at the site, which are indicative of climate. (If a tropical animal is found, the area wasn't glaciated, to be extreme about it.) She rediscovered that backbone bit, suspected it was not a monkey, and called in Barash the paleoanthropologist, Barzilai relates. One look sufficed for Barash to know that an ape, it was not.
That look was followed by a vast amount of comparative research on the vertebrae of ancient hominins, modern humans, hyenas, rhinos, lions, apes and other animal suspects that had all been present in Ubeidiya, say Barash and Ono College's Prof. Been. And this is what they found.
"It was not an australopithecine and not an elephant and not a gorilla and not a mermaid – we measured a ton of vertebrae. It has distinct features. It was a large-bodied bipedal hominin," Barash says.
Even before the vertebra resurfaced and was reclassified as a fragment not of monkey or merperson but of extremely ancient hominin, Ubeidiya had been believed to date back to 1.5 million years, based on stone tools unearthed there thanks to that observant kibbutznik who just meant to clear land to grow something or other, Barzilai says.
Analysis of the bone was done with Been, an expert on paleoanthropology who explains that having thoroughly studied the vertebrae of every animal that moved in Ubeidiya at the time, and decided it was a hominin, they then considered what part of the hominin's back it came from. Morphometric analysis showed the bone was one of the lower three lumbar vertebrae.
"In bipeds, these vertebrae have a unique structure," Been explains. "The anterior part is tall and posterior part short" (because in bipeds, the lower back is load-bearing). "In this one, the anterior part was tall and the posterior part was short, which we don't see in monkeys or apes, which are not bipedal."
The question is, which hominin was this child? One hint lies in the tools found at Ubeidiya, which were classified as relatively advanced Acheulean-type, not primitive Oldowan – which is hugely significant. (Yes, there were extremely primitive stone tools as much as 3.3 million years ago, but we have no idea who the toolmaker was, Barash points out, and shall leave that out of our story.)
Confusion in the Caucasus
It is believed that the Homo line (culminating in us) split from the Pan line (culminating in the chimpanzee) 7 million to 6 million years ago. Until recently it was thought that after the split, human evolution was linear.
It was not. We now realize there were multiple types of hominins, some living contemporaneously with one another and, as of 2 million years ago at least, roaming out of Africa.
The oldest hominin fossils found to date outside Africa are just over 1.8 million years old, in Dmanisi; and now we have this individual from 1.5 million years ago in Israel. So, first of all, clearly there was more than one hominin migration out of Africa. There could have been dozens, there could have been constant creep, in both directions – we simply don't know. The fossil evidence of our prehistory is incredibly sparse and stone tools can only tell us so much.
We also can't say how many hominin species there were in Africa when the ancestors of the Dmanisi crew exited. But among the earliest members of the Homo line in Africa was Homo habilis, which lived from perhaps 2.3 million to 1.6 million years ago. And following on its very heels, we find a new species – Homo erectus, – Barash explains.
The chimp brain is about 300 to 400 cubic centimeters in volume. Australopithecus was no larger than a chimp and had only a slightly bigger brain: perhaps about 450 cc. In other words, no great difference. Australopithecines were weeny, too, with the famed Lucy estimated to have been a meter tall (3 feet, 3 inches). Some think maybe 1.20 meters, which is still wee. Still no great distance from the chimp.
Homo habilis was a step along, with a brain about 600 to 700 cc. in volume but was also short, a few centimeters taller than Lucy. Then come the next species: erectus was a giant, relatively to its predecessors. It was beefier and taller, with a bigger brain, about 800 to 900 cc, Barash explains.
In addition, Homo habilis in Africa was found in association with the primitive, early Oldowan-type tools. Homo erectus in Africa was found in association with more advanced Acheulean-type tools: hand-axes, choppers and the like.
Now for a twist. Who exactly was found at Dmanisi?
Good question. The Georgian authorities simply deflected any classification enigmas by dubbing their being Homo georgicus. Many simply assume it was a variant of erectus. But in fact they were small-bodied and had small brains, Barzilai points out.
Reconstruction of Homo georgicus showed them to be much shorter than erectus, he observes. Moreover, the stone tool culture found there is primitive Oldowan-type, not advanced Acheulean.
Yes, the team suspects that Dmanisi Person, aka Homo georgicus, arose from Homo habilis expanding out of Africa around 2 million years ago and reaching central Asia and perhaps beyond. Though while about it, Barash makes things even messier: there is no consensus that the creatures at Dmanisi belonged to a single species, he says.
"The bottom line is that georgicus were definitely not Homo erectus," he says. "For one thing, their brains were too small. If you took the Dmanisi skulls and put them in an African context, you would clearly see – it's habilis."
Fine. How the habilis or whoever it was got to Dmanisi, we do not know. Israel and the Levant are the natural land bridge between Africa and Eurasia, but no fossil hominin bones from that deep prehistory have ever been found in Israel or anywhere in the Levant. Nor have sites that could be 2 million to 1.8 million years old, going by tools. Which doesn't necessarily mean habilis didn't pass through here 2 million to 1.8 million years ago, just that we haven't found the evidence.
But now, from 1.5 million years ago, associated with relatively advanced Acheulean-type hand axes, Israel has a bone. Whose bone? Erectus' bone.
"It certainly belonged to erectus," Barash states.
Let us be clear that this momentous discovery does not make our lineage any clearer. If anything, it's muddier. We cannot say that habilis begat erectus which begat hominin races in Europe such as the Neanderthal. We have absolutely no idea which if any of these species were our ancestors.
But we can say that because Ubeidiya is 1.5 million years old and the tools are Acheulean, the person there was from a separate migration wave than the ones who wound up in the Caucasus.
One wonders why everybody and his dog assumes the Dmanisi specimens were erectus and are not commonly identified as habilis.
"Erectus used to be the waste basket – everything from 1.5 million years onward was called erectus," Barash sniffs. Nowadays, the fashion is to split them: Homo ergaster, Homo antecessor, and so on. The rub is that actual evidence is beyond scarce. There are perhaps one or two samples of each, which is hardly enough to base speciation on; and may we note the vast variation that can exist within a species. (Pygmy versus Norwegian – need we say more?)
But Barash is sure that Ubeidiya Person is an erectus type. For one thing, despite being a child it would have been huge – not like the weedy, ape-like habilis that maybe would have weighed 30 to 40 kilograms (66 to 88 pounds) in adulthood and reached your waist. The only complete erectus skeleton ever found, in Kenya, was 1.8 meters (6 feet) tall – and it was young. This one in Israel would have been that tall too if it had survived to adulthood, the archaeologists estimate.
Prof. Been for one thinks its final height would have been more than 1.8 meters tall, which is their conservative estimate. It was big, and if anything bigger than the African erectuses, she says.
he died young
So there were multiple waves out of Africa; habilis and erectus, and who knows who else. Asked apropos of nothing for his opinion about the tiny small-brained "hobbits" of Southeast Asia, Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis, Barash doesn't completely dismiss the possibility that they really did arise from a super-primitive species like Australopithecus who might have left Africa even earlier. However, he suspects they arose from habilises or erectuses that reached the region, and underwent dwarfism on the islands. Sapiens they were not.
Now back to northern Israel and that vertebra. Morphologically it was biped-type and hailed from the lower back, aka the lumbar region. And the being was big ("large-bodied"), Barash says.
How do they know 1.5 million years after the event, from a single bone, that it came from a juvenile? It hadn't finished growing. Ossification was not complete.
In modern humans, the last bone to finish ossifying is the pelvis, at about age 25, he explains. The vertebrae ossify at about age 3 to 4. This vertebra was not completely ossified, so it came from a child. They think it may have weighed between 45 to 50 kilograms at death.
This particular one is estimated to have been aged somewhere between 6 and 12, but we don't know how its species grew, he qualifies.
"Modern humans grow very fast from birth to age 3-4, then we grow more slowly, and then in adolescence we have another growth spurt. No other animal does that," Barash explains. "We think Neanderthals also grew linearly. We suspect that here too."
Based on extrapolation, they believe the child would have reached a considerable 1.8 meters in adulthood. Yes, that's classic erectus territory and completely different from what we know from Dmanisi. Going by chimp standards, it could have towered to 1.92 meters in adulthood, the team adds.
Been also shares a personal story – how she became involved in the research. "I was born just 2.5 kilometers from Ubeidiya, in Kibbutz Alumot. When I was a small child, 3 or 4, my grandfather Moshe Zoref would pick up flint tools in the fields which could have been made by erectus! He would make knives out of them, using animal jawbones. He taught me how to use them and would tell me about ancient hominins. For me, this project was closing a circle," she says.
So, what do we have? A child from a very large species of hominin, who in dying in northern Israel 1.5 million years ago provided the first proof that more than one species left Africa in multiple waves over 200,000 to 300,000 years.
And then what happened, after habilis and erectus and who knows who else left Africa? We have no idea.
"Were there other waves before or after? We don't know. We find elephants – maybe they followed the elephants to hunt them," Barash says, going straight into the territory of his colleague at Tel Aviv University, Prof. Ran Barkai, who believes human evolution has close ties with our appetite for elephant.
Barash continues to throw little bombshells into this boiling pot of evolutionary spaghetti. Maybe the erectus and habilis met and interbred in Europe, he speculates for fun. And asked to confirm that, indeed, we have no indication that either of them are ancestral to us, he confirms it.
He also adds: we sapiens never were massive. We are a gracile lot, while the erectus and its ilk (and Neanderthals) were not only tall but burly. It is entirely possible that with all the recent discoveries and all the insights, we never have found our ancestor.
Arab Caught with Treasure Trove of Archeological Artifacts
photo Credit: Israel Police
Uncovered stolen archaeological artifacts.
A police operation to confiscate illegal weapons in Arab localities in northern Israel led to the exposure of a treasure trove of apparently stolen archeological artifacts.
Border Police troops operating on Wednesday with police detectives in the Arab town of Abu Snan in the Galilee to locate weapons searched the home of a suspect.
During the search in the yard of the house, a small bag containing hundreds of ancient coins was found hidden under a rock. Later, a number of ancient sculptures were seized in a nearby warehouse.
The suspect, a local resident in his 30s, was arrested and the findings were transferred for investigation to the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Felons committing antiquities-related offenses can face up to five years in prison under Israeli law.
