Ancient Near East, Palestine: Prehistory

Lower Palaeolithic Palestinian man lived on the shores of lakes and rivers until towards the end of the period when he began to settle in the caves of the mountainous regions. The earliest evidence of this phase is found at Ubeidiyeh, south of the Sea of Galilee (=Lake Tiberias). This Early Pleistocene site is assigned to an Oldowan Early Acheulean culture, dated to 1400 kya. Fragments of a human skull were found and defined as Homo erectus. At the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov site, south of Lake Huleh, all the lithic assemblages are assigned to the Acheulean industrial complex, dated to 750 kya.

Excavation of the Zuttiyeh Cave at the Wadi el-Amud north of the Sea of Galilee in 1925 revealed the Galilee Skull (dated to 350-300 kya) at the base of an archaeological sequence, succeeded by an Acheulo-Yabrudian industry. The skull’s morphology is debated but it appears to have more Homo sapiens characteristics than Neanderthal. Excavation at the Amud Cave during the 1960s revealed a burial of an almost complete Neanderthal male. Excavations in 1991-4 recovered fragmentary remains of seventeen more individuals, mostly infants and children, dated to 65-55 kya.

Mount Carmel has yielded several important sites. The Tabun Cave was occupied intermittently during the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic (500-48 kya). The Kebara Cave south of Mount Carmel was occupied during the Middle Palaeolithic (250-48 kya) to the Epipalaeolithic (20-10 kya). Excavation at Es-Skhul, a small rockshelter and terrace site near Tabun, revealed Upper Palaeolithic, Levalloiso-Mousterian and Natufian occupation levels, and skeleton remains dating to 100 kya thought to be ancestral to European Cro-Magnons.

  The later part of the Epipalaeolithic (12.5-10 kya) is the time of the Natufian culture, named after Wadi en-Natuf, the location of Shukbah Cave, where it was first identified. Remains relating to this period have also been found at Ein Mallaha (near Lake Huleh) and Jericho (West Bank).

Jericho (=Tell es-Sultan) has a long virtually uninterrupted sequence from the Natufian period to the Late Bronze Age (c.1550-c.1200 BC). The site is famous for its Neolithic settlement. During the PPNA (10.5-9.6 kya) there were stone fortifications including a large tower against the inner face of the town wall. The most notable feature during PPNB (9.6-8.0 kya) is a series of plastered skulls painted to render an image of the dead individuals.

During the Chalcolithic (c.4500-c.3600 BC) the number of settlements in Palestine increased dramatically. The main characteristics of this phase were first defined on the basis of the discoveries at the site of Teleilat el-Ghassul, a large open settlement composed of well-constructed rectangular mud-brick houses, located to the north of the Dead Sea.  Later research has revealed that the chronology of the settlements in the vicinity of Beersheba and in the hills to the west of the Dead Sea overlap with that of Ghassul. The name Ghassul-Beersheba is therefore used to describe the culture.

Two remarkable Late Chalcolithic discoveries were made near the western shore of the Dead Sea. The first of these are the remains of a large rectangular building on a hill west of Ein Gedi, whose character and plan resembles a sanctuary found in Stratum XIX at Megiddo. The second discovery is a spectacular hoard of copper objects found in a cave in the Nahal Mishmar, a few kilometres south of Ein Gedi.

The Chalcolithic Age ended with a collapse. It is not known why this happened. It could have been climate change; or maybe Chalcolithic communities were unable to adjust to the changes and migrated; or, although there is no evidence of widespread military destruction, there may have been sporadic warfare that again could have encouraged migration.