Southwest Asian Neanderthals were Neanderthals who lived in Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Iraq, and Iran - the southernmost expanse of the known Neanderthal range. Although their arrival in Asia is not well-dated, early Neanderthals occupied the region apparently until about 100,000 years ago. At this time, Homo sapiens migration seem to have replaced them in one of the first anatomically-modern expansions out of Africa. In their turn, starting around 80,000 years ago, Neanderthals seem to have returned and replaced Homo sapiens in Southwest Asia. They inhabited the region until about 55,000 years ago. [1]
In Southwest Asia Neanderthals have left well-preserved skeletal remains in present-day Palestine, Syria, and Iraq. Remains in Turkey, Lebanon, and Iran are fragmentary. No Neanderthal skeletal remains have ever been found to the south of Jerusalem, and although there are Middle Palaeolithic Levallois points in Jordan and in the Arabian peninsula, it is unclear whether these were made by Neanderthals or by anatomically modern humans. [1] Neanderthals living further to the east, such as those found in present-day Uzbekistan [2] [3] and Asian Russia [4] [5] are known as Central and North Asian Neanderthals.
As of 2013 [update] , although many more Neanderthal remains have been discovered in Southwest Asia than in North Asia, where genetic studies have succeeded, [6] no attempt at extracting DNA from Southwest Asian Neanderthals has ever been successful. [7]
As the Levant is the landbridge to Eurasia, Dmanisi remains in Georgia from 1.81 Ma suggest that hominins passed through the Levant some time before this (unless they crossed the Bab el-Mandeb strait into Arabia). The oldest known hominin specimen from the Levant, and from all the Middle East, is the Zuttiyeh skull, found by Francis Turville-Petre near the Sea of Galilee in 1927. It has not been dated, but lithic industries suggest it dates from 350-250 ka (Bar-Yosef 1992). [8] Though it has some modern characteristics, it has been classified as a specimen of Homo heidelbergensis .
Other known hominin fossils in Southwest Asia older than 100 ka include Shanidar 2 and 4, as well as Tabun C1. All three have at one point been classified as Neanderthals, although the latter two are now usually called pre-Neanderthals. In part because none are well-dated these attributions have all been challenged.
It is believed that anatomically modern humans first entered the Levant by 130 – 100 ka (Grün 2005) [9] from Africa during the Last Interglacial, a hot, parched, period in Africa (Scholz et al. 2007).
Goat δ13C values from c. 92 ka collected at Qafzeh Cave show that goats were eating, depending on the season, between 20 and 50% of C4 plants. These plants are better adapted to dry and hot climates than the much more common C3 plants. Although it was already established that North Africa was arid in the early Last Glacial, Scholz et al. (2007)'s conclusions would extend this to the Levant, making the region in this period more arid than previously thought.[ verification needed ] Frumkin et al. (2011) [10] arrived at a similar conclusion of a hot and arid Levant[ when? ] by examining changes through time of lake levels and in the formation of cave formations.
Potential causes for the initial extinction of modern humans from the Levant and subsequent replacement by Neanderthals around 80 ka include a short-term extreme environmental change in the Levant and environmental changes in the regions neighbouring the Levant. The only long-term environmental change that has been found in the Levant at this period is an increase in rainfall (Hallin et al. 2012), [11] and some moderate cooling of the region (Bar-Yosef 1992, [8] Harrison and Bates 1991), [12] which would not predict a hominin extinction (Hallin et al. 2012). [11] Hence, a short-lived intense environmental change (such as a volcanic winter of 6 to 1000 years caused by the Toba supereruption, Rampino and Self 1992) [13] might have caused modern human extinction, especially if the modern human Levantine population was low (Shea 2008). [14] In this case, Neanderthals could have moved in during or after the modern human evacuation of the region.
Contrarily to modern humans who arrived in the Levant in a period particularly warm in both Eurasia and Africa, Neanderthals are thought to have entered the Levant in a period of increasing Eurasian coldness and aridity known as the Last Glacial Period (Tchernov 1989). [15] In the Levant, however, the conditions would have been wetter than those of today and of the preceding interglacial. This is what Hallin et al. (2012) [11] concluded in their study of the δ13C and δ18O [Note 1] values of goat and gazelle enamel from Amud cave in Neanderthals layers dated to 70-53 ka (Glacial Period), after comparing them to values from Qafzeh cave in a modern human layer dated to 92 ka. They found that at Amud, neither the goats nor the gazelle consumed arid-adapted C4 plants, indicating that the environment was not as dry as today. They found the magnitude and pattern of δ18O values in gazelle and goat teeth enamel to indicate that, unlike today, rain fell throughout the year at Amud in the Neanderthal period. Indeed, the variation in δ18O values in the oldest layers of the teeth, formed when the animal is only a few months old, suggested that goats and gazelles were born throughout the year, which today happens only in the Levant in wetter-than-normal conditions.
Belmaker et al. (2011) [16] compared the prevalence in caves of microfaunal bones brought back by Barn and Eagle owls, which are known to accumulate large quantities of rodent skeletons. Since owls are opportunistic hunters and will eat any small mammal, the bone assemblage they leave behind are thought to be accurate indicators of the environment, given that rodents, like beetles, are susceptible to small changes in temperature and humidity. The researchers did find changes in microfaunal bone assemblages, but all were expected by taphonomic bias. They therefore concluded that there were no significant changes in the environment of the Levant between 70 and 55 ka.
Unless modern humans started expanding into Eurasia through Arabia (where stone tools but very few human bones have been found), the Levant was most likely the first place Neanderthals lost ground to expanding modern humans.
It is unclear why Neanderthals abandoned the Levant or lost it to modern humans. Shea (2008) [14] has argued that Neanderthals were climatically forced out of the region (as modern humans probably were about 75,000 years ago). This is contested. Belmaker et al. (2011) [16] have found that the proportions of microfaunal bones in the Levant between 70 and 55 kya seem stable, despite the fact that small fauna are sensitive to slight changes in temperature or humidity. There would be hence little reason to believe in a slow deterioration of the Neanderthal habitat driving them out by 45 kya. It is possible that climate change drove Neanderthals to extinction quickly some time after 55,000 BP, but Hallin et al. (2012) [11] found strong consistency through time in the δ13C and δ18O values in the teeth of both goats and gazelles, suggesting that the climate was stable in the Levant at this crucial period when Middle Palaeolithic technologies of Neanderthals and early modern humans were replaced by Upper Palaeolithic technology of later modern humans.
Although the environment at this period in the Levant seems to have been stable, Shea (2008) [14] suggested that a rapidly changing environment at the border between the Levant and the Sinai could have stimulated the development of the first Upper Palaeolithic technologies. In this scenario, modern humans would only have been able to displace Neanderthals once they had developed this technology. The advanced tools found in Europe in the millennia thereafter would have developed there and then.
It is believed that Neanderthals and modern humans in the Levant had different resource gathering behaviours. Lieberman and Shea (1994) [17] analysed their lithic hunting technologies and found their differences to suggest Neanderthals hunted more frequently than modern humans. They argue that Neanderthals would have used their intensive hunting strategy to cope with a biodepleted environment, much like the Inuit of the 20th century used to depend largely on hunting. Henry et al. (2017) [18] found that in the Levant the site exploitation territory of Neanderthals was narrow, as they limited themselves to rugged woodlands, while modern humans of the Upper Palaeolithic would have been generalists with large exploitation territories in both the rugged woodlands and levelled steppe landscapes.
Although it does seem as if the environment favoured the initial success and eventual demise of Neanderthals, it is still unclear whether differences in their resource gathering strategies reflect differences in the environment, in anatomy, or in intelligence.
The remains of more than 70 Southwest Asian Neanderthals have been found. Sites are sorted west to east, first by country (westernmost site) then within countries. Important remains are in bold.
Present-day country (country of discovery) | Site | Principal Neanderthal finds | MNI | Geological age (ka) | Descriptions | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Turkey | Karain | Four teeth | 1 | — | Senyürek (1949) [19] [20] | |
Lebanon | Ksâr 'Akil | K2: Teeth and partial maxilla | 1 | — | Ewing (1963) [22] | Ewing lost this specimen while transferring Ksar Akil material from Boston College to Fordham University. [23] |
Lebanon | El Masloukh | Upper second molar [24] | (1) | — | ? | Neanderthal attribution is stratigraphic, not morphological. [25] |
Israel | Kebara | KMH1: 7-9 mo. old partial skel. KMH2 : Post-cranial adult ♂ Various fragments KMH3: Milk tooth (m1-r) [26] | 21 + (10) | 64-59 [29] [30] | KMH1: Smith et al. (1977) [31] KMH2: Arensburg et al. (1985) [32] | Neanderthal attribution uncertain in KMH18-23, 25, 29, and 31 [26] [28] |
West Bank (Mandatory Palestine) | Shuqba | S-D1: Tooth and cranial frags. [24] | 1 | — | Keith (1931) [33] | |
Israel (Mandatory Palestine) | Tabun | T C1: Nearly complete adult ♀ T C2: Toothed mandible missing I1 (♂) Various fragments T E1: Right femur shaft (♂?) | 15 | ≈170-90 | McCown (1936) McCown and Keith (1939) | T C1: Neanderthal attribution is not universally accepted. [37] As of 1975, the whereabouts of T BC2, B3, and BC6 are unknown. [24] : 146 |
Israel | Ein Qashish | (EQH-2: Third molar) EQH-3: Adult lower limbs | 1 + (1) [38] | 70-60 [38] | Been et al. (2017) [38] | Discovered in 2013, these were the first diagnostically Neanderthal remains in Southwest Asia not found in a cave. [38] EQH-2: 70% posterior probability that Neanderthal attribution is correct. [38] |
Israel | Shovakh | (Tooth, M(3)-l [39] [Note 2] ) | (1) | — | S. Binford (1966) [40] | "[A]lthough within archaic and modern human ranges of variation, this complex occlusal morphology may suggest that it is more likely to have derived from a Neandertal than an early modern human". (Trinkaus 1987) [39] |
Israel | Amud | A1 : Adult full skeleton ♂ A2: Maxillary fragment A7: 10-mo.-old partial skel. | 3 [Note 3] [41] | 61-53 [41] | A1: Suzuki et al. (1970) [42] A7: Rak et al. (1994) [43] | |
Syria | Dederiyeh | D1: 19-30-month-old full skel. D2: 21-30-month-old full skel. | 17 | — | D1: Akazawa et al. (1993) [44] D2: Akazawa et al. (1999) [45] | |
Iraq | Shanidar | S1: Adult partial skel. ♂ S2: Adult crushed skel. ♂ | 10 | S2, S4: > 100 Others: 60 | S1: Stewart (1959) [46] S2: Stewart (1961) [47] | Shanidar 2 and 4 are sometimes not treated as Neanderthals. All but Shanidar 3 and 10 (and fragments of 5 excavated in 2015-2016) [51] may have been destroyed in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. [55] |
Iran | Bawa Yawan | Lower left deciduous canine | 1 | ~43,600-~41,500 years ago [56] | Heydari-Guran et al (2021) [56] | |
Iran | Wezmeh | maxillary right premolar tooth | 1 | 70-40 [57] | Zanolli et al. (2019) [57] | |
Iran | Bisitun | Adult radius shaft | 1 | — | Trinkaus and Biglari (2006) [58] | |
Total | 71 + (13) |
Shanidar Cave is an archaeological site on Bradost Mountain, within the Zagros Mountains in the Erbil Governorate of Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq. Neanderthal remains were discovered here in 1953, including Shanidar 1, who survived several injuries, possibly due to care from others in his group, and Shanidar 4, the famed 'flower burial'. Until this discovery, Cro-Magnons, the earliest known H. sapiens in Europe, were the only individuals known for purposeful, ritualistic burials.
Kebara Cave is a limestone cave locality in Wadi Kebara, situated at 60 to 65 m above sea level on the western escarpment of the Carmel Range, in the Ramat HaNadiv preserve of Zichron Yaakov.
La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1 is an almost-complete male Neanderthal skeleton discovered in La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France by A. and J. Bouyssonie, and L. Bardon in 1908. The individual was around 40 at the time of his death. He was in bad health, having lost most of his teeth and suffering from bone resorption in the mandible and advanced arthritis.
The prehistory of the Levant includes the various cultural changes that occurred, as revealed by archaeological evidence, prior to recorded traditions in the area of the Levant. Archaeological evidence suggests that Homo sapiens and other hominid species originated in Africa and that one of the routes taken to colonize Eurasia was through the Sinai Peninsula desert and the Levant, which means that this is one of the most occupied locations in the history of the Earth. Not only have many cultures lived here, but also many species of the genus Homo. In addition, this region is one of the centers for the development of agriculture.
Ksar Akil is an archeological site 10 km (6.2 mi) northeast of Beirut in Lebanon. It is located about 800 m (2,600 ft) west of Antelias spring on the north bank of the northern tributary of the Wadi Antelias. It is a large rock shelter below a steep limestone cliff.
Neanderthals are an extinct group of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. The type specimen, Neanderthal 1, was found in 1856 in the Neander Valley in present-day Germany.
The Skhul and Qafzeh hominins or Qafzeh–Skhul early modern humans are hominin fossils discovered in Es-Skhul and Qafzeh caves in Israel. They are today classified as Homo sapiens, among the earliest of their species in Eurasia. Skhul Cave is on the slopes of Mount Carmel; Qafzeh Cave is a rockshelter near Nazareth in Lower Galilee.
Neanderthal anatomy differed from modern humans in that they had a more robust build and distinctive morphological features, especially on the cranium, which gradually accumulated more derived aspects, particularly in certain isolated geographic regions. This robust build was an effective adaptation for Neanderthals, as they lived in the cold environments of Europe. In which they also had to operate in Europe's dense forest landscape that was extremely different from the environments of the African grassland plains that Homo sapiens adapted to with a different anatomical build.
The details about Neanderthal behaviour remain highly controversial. From their physiology, Neanderthals are presumed to have been omnivores, but animal protein formed the majority of their dietary protein, showing them to have been carnivorous apex predators and not scavengers. Although very little is known of their social organization, it appears patrilines would make up the nucleus of the tribe, and women would seek out partners in neighbouring tribes once reaching adolescence, presumably to avoid inbreeding. An analysis based on finger-length ratios suggests that Neanderthals were more sexually competitive and promiscuous than modern-day humans.
Mugharet el-Zuttiyeh is a prehistoric archaeological site in Upper Galilee, Israel. It is situated 800 m (2,600 ft) from the Nahal Amud outlet, approximately 30 m (98 ft) above the wadi bed. It was found to house a fossil today known as the "Galilee skull" or "The Yabrudian Man".
Manot Cave is a cave in Western Galilee, Israel, discovered in 2008. It is notable for the discovery of a skull that belongs to a modern human, called Manot 1, which is estimated to be 54,700 years old. The partial skull was discovered at the beginning of the cave's exploration in 2008. Its significance was realised after detailed scientific analysis, and was first published in an online edition of Nature on 28 January 2015. This age implies that the specimen is the oldest known human outside Africa, and is evidence that modern humans lived side-by-side with Neanderthals. The cave is also noted for its "impressive archaeological record of flint and bone artefacts". Geologically, it is an "active stalactite cave".
Amud 1 is a nearly complete but poorly preserved adult Southwest Asian Neanderthal skeleton thought to be about 55,000 years old. It was discovered at Amud in Israel by Hisashi Suzuki in July 1961, who described it as male. With an estimated height of 1.78 m, it is the tallest known Neanderthal, and its skull has by far the largest cranial capacity of any human skull in the fossil record. According to Ralph Holloway, this makes it one of the most famous Neanderthal specimens.
Kebara 2 is a 61,000 year-old Levantine Neanderthal mid-body male skeleton. It was discovered in 1983 by Ofer Bar-Yosef, Baruch Arensburg, and Bernard Vandermeersch in a Mousterian layer of Kebara Cave, Israel. To the excavators, its disposition suggested it had been deliberately buried, though like every other putative Middle Palaeolithic intentional burial, this has been questioned.
The diet of known human ancestors varies dramatically over time. Strictly speaking, according to evolutionary anthropologists and archaeologists, there is not a single hominin Paleolithic diet. The Paleolithic covers roughly 2.8 million years, concurrent with the Pleistocene, and includes multiple human ancestors with their own evolutionary and technological adaptations living in a wide variety of environments. This fact with the difficulty of finding conclusive evidence often makes broad generalizations of the earlier human diets very difficult. Humans' pre-hominin primate ancestors were broadly herbivorous, relying on either foliage or fruits and nuts and the shift in dietary breadth during the Paleolithic is often considered a critical point in hominin evolution. A generalization between Paleolithic diets of the various human ancestors that many anthropologists do make is that they are all to one degree or another omnivorous and are inextricably linked with tool use and new technologies.
Qafzeh Cave, also known by other names, is a prehistoric archaeological site located at the bottom of Mount Precipice in the Jezreel Valley of Lower Galilee south of Nazareth. Important remains of prehistoric people were discovered on the site - some of the oldest examples in the world, outside of Africa, of virtually anatomically modern human beings. These were discovered on the ledge just outside the cave, where 18 layers from the Middle Paleolithic era were identified. The interior of the cave contains layers ranging from the Neolithic era to the Bronze Age.
The Ahmarian culture was a Paleolithic archeological industry in the Levant dated at 46,000–42,000 years before present (BP) and thought to be related to Levantine Emiran and younger European Aurignacian cultures.
Erella Hovers is an Israeli paleoanthropologist. She is currently a professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, working within the Institute of Archeology. The majority of her field work is centered in the Horn of Africa, with a primary focus on Ein Qashish, Israel and Eastern Ethiopia. Her research concentrates on the development of the use of symbolism during the Levantine Middle Palaeolithic and Middle Stone Age. Other research interests include lithic technology, taphonomy, and general behavior of early hominids.
Anna Belfer-Cohen is an Israeli archaeologist and paleoanthropologist and Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Belfer-Cohen excavated and studied many important prehistoric sites in Israel including Hayonim and Kebara Caves and open-air sites such as Nahal Ein Gev I and Nahal Neqarot. She has also worked for many years in the Republic of Georgia, where she made important contributions to the study of the Paleolithic sequence of the Caucasus following her work at the cave sites of Dzoudzuana, Kotias and Satsrublia. She is a specialist in biological Anthropology, prehistoric art, lithic technology, the Upper Paleolithic and modern humans, the Natufian-Neolithic interface and the transition to village life.
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