Sites of the Levantine Mousterian are concentrated along the coastline of Lebanon and northern Israel, but extend inland across the Negev to southern Jordan in the south and into eastern Syria in the north. Excavation of a cave at Ras el-Kelb, to the north of Beirut, has revealed a relatively early phase of Mousterian, dated to before 52 kya.
Situated a few kilometres inland from the coast near Beirut, the large rockshelter of Ksar Akil is one the most important prehistoric sites in the eastern Mediterranean basin. Its nineteen-metre-deep deposits spanned the Middle Palaeolithic and Epipalaeolithic. The Middle Palaeolithic levels had scrapers and Levallois flint tools, dating to 45 kya. In the lowest of the Upper Palaeolithic levels the upper jaw of a Neanderthal was found, and at a higher level the skeleton of a modern human was discovered. The site was abandoned about 10 kya.
Villages appeared c.6000 BC, and the coastal area first appears in recorded history during the late fourth millennium BC as a group of towns inhabited by Canaanites. Phoenicia never existed as a single state, but was a loose association of cities and adjacent territories ruled by local princes and a mercantile aristocracy. The Greeks, however, perceived them as a nation and gave them the collective name Phoenicia, possibly after the purple (phoinix) dye they produced and traded.
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