Prehistory of the Levant
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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
Impact of location, climate, routes
Geographically the area is divided between a coastal plain, hill country to the east and the Jordan Valley joining the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea. Rainfall decreases from the north to the south, with the result that the northern region of Israel has generally been more economically developed than the southern one of Judah.[citation needed]
At the latest from the Neolithic period onwards, the area's location at the center of three
- A Coastal Route (the "Phoenicia and Anatolia.
- A Hill Route: travelling through the .
- The "Kings Highway": travelling north from Eilat, east of the Jordan through Amman to Damascus, and connected to the "frankincense road" north from Yemen and South Arabia.
The area seems to have suffered from acute periods of desiccation, and reduced rainfall which has influenced the relative importance of settled versus nomadic ways of living. The cycle seems to have been repeated a number of times during which a reduced rainfall increases periods of fallow, with farmers spending increasing amounts of time with their flocks and away from cultivation. Eventually they revert to fully nomadic cultures, which, when rainfall increases settle around important sources of water and begin to spend increasing amounts of time on cultivation. The increased prosperity leads to a revival of inter-regional and eventually international trade. The growth of villages rapidly proceeds to increased prosperity of market towns and city states, which attract the attention of neighbouring great powers, who may invade to capture control of regional trade networks and possibilities for tribute and taxation. Warfare leads to opening the region to pandemics, with resultant depopulation, overuse of fragile soils and a reversion to nomadic pastoralism.[citation needed]
Palaeolithic period (1,850,000 - 20,000 years ago)
Lower Paleolithic period (1.85 million – 200,000 years ago)
The earliest traces of the human occupation in the Levant are documented in Ubeidiya in the Jordan Valley of the Southern Levant (modern-day Israel). The site was dated to c. 1.4 million years ago,[2] but further research has fixed its chronological context to 1.5–1.2 million years ago.[3] The site yielded stone tools typical of the Acheulean industry which appears in East Africa as early as c. 1.76 million years ago.[4] An earlier site is found in Dmanisi, Georgia, dated to 1.85–1.78 million years ago[5] suggest the existence of other sites in the Levant which are yet to be found. Stone tools of the Oldowan industry, preceding the Acheulian, were found in the Negev and Syrian deserts and support the presence of pre-Acheulian cultures in the Levantine corridor, but their chronological context cannot be determined.[6]
Ubeidiya - Early Acheulian (c. 1.5 – 1.2 million years ago)
Ubeidiya is an open site that existed alongside the extinct Lake Ubeidiya whose shores were inhabited by over a hundred Asian and African animal species including mammals (such as Giraffe, Elephant, Deer, Antelope, and Pelorovis), birds, reptiles, amphibians and insects. Some of these animals have been hunted by hominins who inhabited the site as evident in cut marks observed on the fossilized bones. The stone tools found in Ubeidiya include handaxes, picks, chopping tools and spheroids. These tools have been attested to the Early Acheulian industry. The tools show preference for specific rock types such as basalt, limestone and flint for specific tool types. This implies a sophisticated understanding of raw materials by the hominins who located and selected them for production. Other stone tool assemblages in the Levant have been attested to the Early Acheulian, but they lack sufficient dating evidence to allow comparison with Ubeidiya's finds. These sites include Abbassieh near the Nile, Evron Quarry and Zihor in Israel and Al-Lataminah in Syria.[7]
Gesher Benot Ya'akov - Large Flake Acheulian (c. 790,000 – 650,000 years ago)
North of Ubeidiya is the important site of
Late Acheulian (c. 500,000 – 400,000 years ago)
The late stage of the Acheulian industry is observed in thousands of sites and find spots in the Middle East, though only a few were excavated. Most of the sites did not yield enough datable evidence. The site at Lake Ram in the Golan Heights was dated based on the basalt flows below and above to an unknown timespan between c. 800,000–233,000 years ago. More accurate dates from Ma'ayan Baruch and the Revadim Quarry in Israel provide the timeframe of c. 500,000–400,000 years ago. Late Acheulian sites and finds are found spread all across the regions of the Levant, including desert regions in modern-day Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, primarily associated with oases, as well as the coastal plains and rift valleys of Israel, Lebanon and Syria. This distribution of sites in various regions of different conditions indicates either a more suitable climate in this period (the Chibanian stage of the Pleistocene) or alternatively better human adapting skills. The earliest cave sites also appear in this stage. Unlike the earlier Acheulian industries in the Levant, flint is the primary material used for tool making, with the handaxe being the primary tool. The toolmakers developed different variants of handaxes different in shape and function, which replaced other tools such as cleavers. Some of the most significant assemblages of stone tools are found in Nadaouiyeh (in central Syria), Tabun, Um Qatafa and Ma'ayan Baruch (in Israel). These sites yield an enormous amount of stone tools, reaching several thousands. An important discovery from Lake Ram is a stone pebble with evidence of artificial shaping and polishing, which resembles the body of a woman and thus serves as one of the earliest figurines known.[9]
Middle Paleolithic period
The
Upper Paleolithic
The
Epi-Palaeolithic period (20,000 - 9,500 BCE)
The
Natufian
This culture existed from about 13,000 to 9,800
Neolithic period
Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic
The Neolithic is traditionally divided to the Pre-Pottery (A and B) and Pottery Late Neolithic phases. Pre-Pottery Neolithic A developed from the earlier Natufian cultures of the area. This is the time of the Neolithic Revolution and development of agricultural economies in the Near East, and the region's first known megaliths (and Earth's oldest known megalith, other than Göbekli Tepe, which is in the Northern Levant and from an unknown culture) with a burial chamber and tracking of the sun or other stars.[citation needed]
In addition, the Levant in the Neolithic (and later, in the Chalcolithic) was involved in large scale, far reaching trade.[12]
Chalcolithic period
Trade on an impressive scale and covering large distances continued during the
The Ghassulian period created the basis of the Mediterranean economy which has characterized the area ever since. A Chalcolithic culture, the Ghassulian economy was a mixed agricultural system consisting of extensive cultivation of grains (wheat and barley), intensive horticulture of vegetable crops, commercial production of vines and olives, and a combination of transhumance and nomadic pastoralism. The Ghassulian culture, according to Juris Zarins, developed out of the earlier Munhata phase of what he calls the "circum Arabian nomadic pastoral complex", probably associated with the first appearance of Semites in this area.[13]
Early and Middle Bronze Age
The urban development of
The following
Timeline
See also
- History and archaeology articles
- Genetic history of the Middle East
- History of the Levant
- Levantine archaeology
- Names of the Levant
- Near Eastern bioarchaeology
- Prehistoric Asia
- Chronologies and timelines
- Sites
References
- S2CID 35814375.
- ^ Bar-Yosef (1994). "The lower paleolithic of the Near East" (8): 211–265.
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(help) - PMID 19427671 – via ScienceDirect.)
The biochronological analysis narrows the age range for the fossil bearing strata at 'Ubeidiya and the Early Acheulian industry in the Jordan Valley to 1.5–1.2 Ma and is 100–200,000 years earlier than previously estimated.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - JSTOR 24768985.
- PMID 21646521.)
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ Sharon (2014), pp. 1359–1360
- ^ Sharon (2014), pp. 1360–1363
- ^ Sharon (2014), pp. 1363–1364
- ^ Sharon (2014), pp. 1365–1366
- S2CID 162966796.
- S2CID 246637735.
- ^ .
- ^ Zarins, Juris (1992) "Pastoral Nomadism in Arabia: Ethnoarchaeology and the Archaeological Record," in O. Bar-Yosef and A. Khazanov (eds.), "Pastoralism in the Levant: Archaeological Materials in Anthropological Perspectives"
- ^ Bright, John (2000)"A History of Israel" (John Knox Press Westminster)
- ^ Albright, William F. "From Abraham to Ezra"
- ^ "See". Archived from the original on 2008-02-24. Retrieved 2007-02-26.
Bibliography
- Gonen Sharon (2014). "The Early Prehistory of Western and Central Asia". The Cambridge World Prehistory: West and Central Asia and Europe. Vol. 3. ISBN 978-1-107-02379-6.
External links
- Joel Ng, Introduction to Biblical Archaeology 2: From Stone to Bronze
- Paul James Cowie, Archaeowiki: Archaeology of the Southern Levant