Ofer Bar-Yosef

States of preservation of bones from prehistoric sites in the Near East: A survey

Abstract A survey of the states of preservation of organic material in 30 fossil bones from 16 different prehistoric sites in the Near East shows that whereas almost all the bones have little or no collagen preserved, they do, with few exceptions, contain non-collagenous proteins. These macromolecules, therefore, represent an important reservoir of indigenous fossil bone constituents.

The Natufian culture in the Levant, threshold to the origins of agriculture†

The aim of this paper is to provide the reader with an updated description of the archeological evidence for the origins of agriculture in the Near East. Specifically, I will address the question of why the emergence of farming communities in the Near East was an inevitable outcome of a series of social and economic circumstances that caused the Natufian culture to be considered the threshold for this major evolutionary change.1–4 The importance of such an understanding has global implications. Currently, updated archeological information points to two other centers of early cultivation, central Mexico and the middle Yangtze River in China, that led to the emergence of complex civilizations.4 However, the best‐recorded sequence from foraging to farming is found in the Near East. Its presence warns against the approach of viewing all three evolutionary sequences as identical in terms of primary conditions, economic and social motivations and activities, and the resulting cultural, social, and ideological changes.

The origins of sedentism and farming communities in the Levant

Particular geographic features of the Mediterranean Levant underlie the subsistence patterns and social structures reconstructed from the archaeological remains of Epi-Paleolithic groups. The Kebaran, Geometric Kebaran, and Mushabian complexes are defined by technotypological features that reflect the distributions of social units. Radiocarbon dating and paleoclimatic data permit us to trace particular groups who, facing environmental fluctuations, made crucial changes in subsistence strategies, which, in the southern Levant, led to sedentism in base camps on the ecotone of the Mediterranean woodland-parkland and the Irano-Turanian steppe. The establishment of Early Natufian sedentary communities led to a regional change in settlement pattern. The relatively cold and dry climate of the eleventh millennium B.P. forced Negev groups into a special arid adpatation. The early Holocene onset of wetter and warmer conditions favored the earliest Neolithic (PPNA) development of village life based on the cultivation of barley and legumes, gathering of wild seeds and fruits and continued hunting.

From Africa to Eurasia * early dispersals

The dispersals of early hominins in the late Pliocene or early Pleistocene into Eurasia were essentially sporadic. Little geographic and temporal continuity is observed between the various dated archaeological contexts, and the lithic assemblages do not demonstrate a techno-morphological continuity. The archaeological evidence from 1.8 to 0.7 Ma indicates at least three waves of early migrations. The earliest sortie involved bearers of core-chopper industries sometime around 1.7}1.6 Ma. Early Acheulean producers followed possibly around 1.4 Ma. The third wave occurred sometime around 0.8 Ma, and is represented by Acheulean groups who manufactured numerous #ake cleavers. The geographic scope of each of these waves is not yet well known.The reasons for &why’ early humans dispersed from Africa into Eurasia include the &push’ of environmental change and relative &demographic pressure’, as well as the opening of new niches. Humans may have gained their meat supplies either from carcasses or through active predation. The archaeological and fossil records demonstrate that Homo erectus was a successful species, and like other successful species it enlarged its geographic distribution at all costs. Even if the trigger for the initial dispersal of Homo erectus remains unknown or controversial, the success of the hominid occupation of the Eurasian habitats was not primarily facilitated by the availability of food, or the human #exibility in food procuring techniques, but by the absence of the zoonotic diseases that plagued and constrained hominins in their African &cradle of evolution’. Once humans succeeded in crossing the disease-plagued belts of Africa the chances for survival of many more members of their groups rose steeply. It was only thereafter that humans could exploit their latent capacities and came to enjoy their global colonization. ( 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.

Early Domesticated Fig in the Jordan Valley

It is generally accepted that the fig tree was domesticated in the Near East some 6500 years ago. Here we report the discovery of nine carbonized fig fruits and hundreds of drupelets stored in Gilgal I, an early Neolithic village, located in the Lower Jordan Valley, which dates to 11,400 to 11,200 years ago. We suggest that these edible fruits were gathered from parthenocarpic trees grown from intentionally planted branches. Hence, fig trees could have been the first domesticated plant of the Neolithic Revolution, which preceded cereal domestication by about a thousand years.

ESR dates for the hominid burial site of Qafzeh in Israel

Abstract Early modern hominids are found buried at the mouth of a cave at Qafzeh near Nazareth, Israel. They are associated with a Middle Paleolithic lithic industry. Previous dating of this site by TL analysis of burnt flint (Valladas et al., 1988) gave an age of 92 ± 5 kyr. We have now used the ESR method to date enamel of teeth of large mammals from the hominid-bearing layers. Assuming a constant rate of uptake of U through time by the teeth, we obtain an age of 115 ± 15 kyr. This is consistent with the TL results demonstrating early arrival of fully modern humans in Southwestern Asia.

An Early Case of Color Symbolism: Ochre Use by Modern Humans in Qafzeh Cave

Prehistoric archaeology provides the temporal depth necessary for understanding the evolution of the unique human ability to construct and use complex symbol systems. The longstanding focus on language, a symbol system that does not leave direct evidence in the material record, has led to interpretations based on material proxies of this abstract behavior. The ambiguities resulting from this situation may be reduced by focusing on systems that use material objects as the carriers of their symbolic contents, such as color symbolism. Given the universality of some aspects of color symbolism in extant human societies, this article focuses on the 92,000yearold ochre record from Qafzeh Cave terrace to examine whether the human capacity for symbolic behavior could have led to normative systems of symbolic culture as early as Middle Paleolithic times. Geochemical and petrographic analyses are used to test the hypothesis that ochre was selected and mined specifically for its color. Ochre is found to occur through time in association with other finds unrelated to mundane tasks. It is suggested that such associations fulfill the hierarchical relationships that are the essence of a symbolic referential framework and are consistent with the existence of symbolic culture. The implications of these findings for understanding the evolution of symbolic culture in the contexts of the African and Levantine prehistoric records are explored.Prehistoric archaeology provides the temporal depth necessary for understanding the evolution of the unique human ability to construct and use complex symbol systems. The longstanding focus on language, a symbol system that does not leave direct evidence in the material record, has led to interpretations based on material proxies of this abstract behavior. The ambiguities resulting from this situation may be reduced by focusing on systems that use material objects as the carriers of their symbolic contents, such as color symbolism. Given the universality of some aspects of color symbolism in extant human societies, this article focuses on the 92,000yearold ochre record from Qafzeh Cave terrace to examine whether the human capacity for symbolic behavior could have led to normative systems of symbolic culture as early as Middle Paleolithic times. Geochemical and petrographic analyses are used to test the hypothesis that ochre was selected and mined specifically for its color. Ochre is found to occur through...

Last hunters - first farmers : new perspectives on the prehistoric transition to agriculture

During virtually the entire four-million-year history of our habitation on this planet, humans have been hunters and gatherers, dependent for nourishment on the availability of wild plants and animals. Beginning about 10,000 years ago, however, the most remarkable phenomenon in the course of human prehistory was set in motion. At locations around the world, over a period of about 5000 years, hunters became farmers. The implications of this revolution in human activity and social organization reverberate down to the present day. In case studies ranging from the Far East to the American Southwest, the authors of Last Hunters-First Farmers provide a global perspective on contemporary research into the origins of agriculture. Downplaying more traditional explanations of the turn to agriculture, such as the influence of marginal environments and population pressures, the authors emphasize instead the importance of the resource-rich areas in which agriculture began, the complex social organizations already in place, the role of sedentism, and, in some locales, the advent of economic intensification and competition.

30,000-Year-Old Wild Flax Fibers

Dyed flax fibers from 30,000 years ago show that humans in the Caucasus were making colored twine at that time. A unique finding of wild flax fibers from a series of Upper Paleolithic layers at Dzudzuana Cave, located in the foothills of the Caucasus, Georgia, indicates that prehistoric hunter-gatherers were making cords for hafting stone tools, weaving baskets, or sewing garments. Radiocarbon dates demonstrate that the cave was inhabited intermittently during several periods dated to 32 to 26 thousand years before the present (kyr B.P.), 23 to 19 kyr B.P., and 13 to 11 kyr B.P. Spun, dyed, and knotted flax fibers are common. Apparently, climatic fluctuations recorded in the cave’s deposits did not affect the growth of the plants because a certain level of humidity was sustained.

The lower paleolithic of the Near East

The Near East forms the geographic crossroads between Africa, Asia and Europe and was certainly a main route for the dispersal of Homo erectusinto Eurasia. The study of Lower Paleolithic sites in this region and in the neighboring Caucasus area sheds some light on several potential colonization events. Sites such as ‘Ubeidiya (Jordan Valley) and Dmanisi (Georgia) suggest the early sorties took place around 1.4-1.0 Ma. Despite the lack of radiometric dates, sequences of raised beaches, marine deposits, river terraces, and paleolake formations have enabled various investigators to identify several series of major aggradation and erosion periods within the Pleistocene. Lithic assemblages derived from a few systematic excavations and collections from stratigraphically dated outcrops led to a threefold subdivision of the Acheulian sequence into the Lower, Middle, and Upper Acheulian. The study of nonbiface assemblages, however, has not resolved the question of whether these assemblages deserve inclusion as separate entities or should be viewed as sites within the Acheulian settlement pattern. While the typotechnological definitions of each major phase can be compared to what is known from other regions of the Old World, the Acheulo-Yabrudian (or the Mugharan Tradition) is seen as a local entity. Rare human remains and scarce data concerning subsistence activities do not warrant a comparative discussion with what is known from African and some European sites.