The geographic position of the Levant at the crossroads between Africa and Eurasia made it a natural path for the dispersal of H. ergaster or erectus. The earliest site is Dmanisi in Georgia. The site was originally located at the shores of a small lake. Accumulations of bones and artifacts were the results of redeposition from the occupation levels in a series of ‘pipes’. The most striking discoveries are five skulls and a suite of postcranial bones. The stratified assemblages overlie a lava flow dated to 1.8 million years and the rapid rate of deposition indicates a terminal age for the site c. 1.7 million years. The lithic industry primarily consists of core-choppers, and numerous flakes, several of which are retouched. Based on African terminology, it was suggested to call the industry ‘pre-Oldowan’. However, this term only indicates that the main artifacts are cores and flakes and other Asian sites, mostly those beyond the so-called Movius line, exhibit similar composition. Pollen from coprolites indicates that the area was forested with tree species such as Abies, Pinus, Fagus, Alnus, Castanea, Tilia, Betula, Carpinus, and rare Ulmus and Salix, and bushes such as rhododendron, corylus, and myrtle, as well as herbaceous vegetation dominated by Cyper-aceae, Graminae, and Polygonaceae. This association reflects an environment of high mountains with well-watered woodland of an inland basin. The fauna included essentially palaeoarctic species such as Struthio dmanisensis, Ursus etruscus, Canis etruscus, Pachycro-cuta sp., Homotherium sp., Megantereon cf. meganter-eon, Archidiscodon meridionalis, Equus cf. stenonis, Equus cf. altidens, Dicerorhinus etruscus, Sus sp.,
Dama cf. nestii, Cervus sp., Dmanisibos georgicus, Caprini gen., Ovis sp., Leporinae gen., Cricetulus sp., and Marmota sp. Most of the fauna accumulated at the edge of a shallow lake but some bones demonstrate human involvement whether related to scavenging and/or hunting.
Second in antiquity is ’Ubeidiya that lies 3 km south of the Sea of Galilee on the flanks of the western escarpment of the Jordan Rift. With the aid of heavy machinery, several geological trenches (numbered-I-V, K, and Ka) were excavated to a total length of about 1100 m. The geological structure, as observed in these artificial exposures, is an anticline with several undulations accompanied by several faults. The numerous layers in the trenches were numbered from the observed earliest to the latest over a total thickness of about 154 m. The observed sequence was subdivided into four cycles, two limnic (Li and Lu) and two terrestrial (Fi and Fu), as follows:
1. The Li cycle, characterized by clays, silts, and limestone, terminates with laminated silts, rich with freshwater mollusks and fish remains. One layer (III-12) contained mammalian bones and some artifacts, and provided the only pollen spectrum indicating the forest cover of the flanks of the Jordan Valley.
2. The Fi cycle is built of clays and conglomerates, mainly beach deposits. Most of the archaeological finds and faunal remains were obtained from this member beginning with layer II-21 through III-64.
3. The Lu cycle is the upper limnic member, and consists of two parts: the lower part is essentially clays and chalks, while the upper part is a whitish-grayish-yellow silty series. Only a few artifacts were encountered in this unit.
4. The Fu cycle consists mainly of conglomerates, some of which are large basalt boulders. No artifacts or mollusks were found in this member. Presumably, it represents the regression or even total disappearance of Lake ’Ubeidiya due to the onset of a tectonic movement. This member is overlain by a Pliocene overthrusted block within which the basaltic flow was K/Ar-dated to 3.6 million years.
The palaeoenvironments of ’Ubeidiya were reconstructed on the basis of the different nature of the layers while taking into account the malacological and faunal assemblages. The results indicate that the site was located within a sequence of complex alluvial and deltaic situations in which lakeshores fluctuated constantly. The major lake expansions are recorded in the Li and Lu members while the retreat is reflected in the Fi member. It is at that time that hominins camped on the lakeshores, at the edges of the alluvial fan, and on the mud flats or temporarily dried marshes. From the hilly area, several lithic assemblages were washed and redeposited within the gravels that filled a wadi channel (layers K-29, K-30, and III-34, 35). The lake transgressed again (Lu), and then regressed (Fu), this time probably as a result of the beginning of the tectonic movement that caused the folding of the formation and the slumping of the Pliocene block on top of its younger member.
The archaeological excavations at ’Ubeidiya uncovered many layers with numerous artifacts. Field observations indicate that the same layers can be traced on both sides of the main anticline. However, in order to avoid unfounded correlations, layers were numbered separately in relation to each geological trench. Of the 65 artifact-bearing layers, 15 can be considered as the major archaeological horizons and most were excavated on sufficiently large exposures to provide a fairly large sample of artifacts and animal bones. The depositional environment indicates on what kind of natural environment hominins preferred to stay. These types of localities are on top of a drying marshy layer, on the gravelly lake beaches, and somewhere upslope, perhaps on the plateau above the Jordan Valley. The latter contexts were washed into the lake and accumulated within a fluvial conglomerate. It should be noted that occasional isolated artifacts were encountered in different geological layers reminiscent of spare finds in East African Lower Palaeolithic sites.
The raw materials used for making artifacts were lava (basalt), flint, and limestone. The basalt occurs as pebbles, cobbles, boulders, and scree components; the limestone as cobbles within the beach and wadi deposits; and the flint in the same environments as small pebbles and cobbles. The shapes of the stone objects modified by hominins include the corechoppers and the detached pieces such as flakes mostly made of flint, limestone spheroids, hand axes, trihedrals, and picks made mainly of basalt, with a few of flint and limestone. There is a direct correlation between the size of the object category and the type of common raw material.
The dating of ’Ubeidiya is based on faunal correlations with Dmanisi and European sites and is thus suggested as 1.4-1.5 million years, and current electron spin resonance (ESR) dates suggest 1.2 million years. Among the faunal assemblages that include more than 100 species of mammals, birds, and reptiles, the following species are chronologically noteworthy: Lagurodon arankae, Mammuthus meri-dionalis cf. Tamanensis, Praemegaceros verticornis, Canis arnensis, Pelorovis oldowayensis, Apodemus (Sylvaticus) sylvaticus, Apodemus flavicollis, Dicerorhi-nus etruscus, Panthera gombaszoegensis, Kolpochoerus oldowayensis, Hippopotamus gorgops, Hippopotamus behemoth, Hypolagus brachygmathus, Allocrice-tus bursae, Cricetus cricetus, Gazellospira torticornis, Sus strozzii, Ursus etruscus, Pannonictis ardea, Mega-ntereon cultridens, Crocuta crocuta, Herpestes sp. In sum, the ’Ubeidiya faunal is essentially Late Villafran-chian with a few Galerian elements, and is mostly Euroasiatic with rare African elements. Faunal connections with Africa were cut off during the Late Pliocene and the early part of the Lower Pleistocene. Most of the fauna accumulated on the lakeshores and in the deltaic deposits. Only a small portion indicates the involvement of humans, probably due to hunting although scavenging as meat-obtaining strategy was not excluded.
Dmanisi and ’Ubeidiya mark stations in human dispersals from Africa into Eurasia through the Levantine corridor. The existence of the Saharan desertic belt since the end of the Miocene excludes the interior of the Arabian Peninsula from the Levantine corridor except for the coast of the Red Sea. Under interglacial conditions, the northern penetration of the monsoonal system drastically changed the potential for increasing amounts of resources in eastern Sahara and could have enabled an alternative route for H. erectus or archaic H. sapiens groups. The Lower Palaeolithic assemblages at el-Abassieh in Cairo may indicate that the Nile Valley should not be excluded as a potential migration route.
The Acheulian sequence is generally divided into three major categories: Lower, Middle, and Upper Acheulian. Assemblages are incorporated in each phase based on the morphological and metrical attributes of the bifaces. In general, the bifaces demonstrate additional refinement in their shapes and the degree of symmetry, when compared to the most simple forms at ’Ubeidiya, that represent the Lower Acheulian.
Over 200 Acheulian occurrences were recorded in the Levant, eastern Turkey, and Iran. However, the number of excavated sites is small and includes Evron-Quarry, Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Holon, Reva-dim, Tabun cave, and Umm Qatafa in Israel, Latamne and Gharmachi in Syria, Ain Soda and Lion’s Spring in the Azraq Basin in Jordan, and Sehrmuz and Kaltepe in Turkey.
The site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, where most of the industry was manufactured from basalt with fewer artifacts made of flint and limestone, stands out with the amount of available information concerning faunal, plant remains, palaeoecological observations, and detailed lithic studies. The dominance of cleavers made of basalt flakes, provides an
African aspect to this industry and is seen as cultural evidence for another movement of hominids from Africa into the Levant. Several layers of the depositional sequence of the site, which amounts to over 30 m thick and is tilted westward, were recently extensively excavated. The Bruhnes/Matuyama palaeomagnetic chronological borderline (0.78 million years ago) was found within the site’s sequence characterized by the accumulation of fluvial, lacustrine, overbank sediments at the shoreline of an old Hula lake. Among the most important discoveries was the residue for the use of fire by the site’s occupants. Many thousands of small flakes that bear potlid fractures, which mark the effects of fire, were identified in particular concentrations.
Among the faunal remains the species identified were Stegodon mediterraneus, Mamuthus (Elephas) trogontherii, Dicerorhinus merckii, Hippopotamus amphibius, Dama mesopotamica, Bison cf. priscus; Capra sp., Gazella gazella. This assemblage falls within the general definition of the Galerian fauna that replaced the Late Villafranchian association around 0.9-0.7 million years ago.
Most of the sites from this period demonstrate the involvement of humans in the formation of the accumulations. Hunting and opportunistic scavenging were the main procurement strategies. The site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov produced also a wealth of plant remains, some of which were collected as food items by the camping foragers.
One should mention the Middle Acheulian that in the past seemed to be a recognized phase within the Acheulian of the Near East. It was best known from the systematically collected samples in river gravels along the Nahr el Kebir and Orontes Rivers in Syria. Rare finds were retrieved in the Euphrates Valley, and some in the Beqa’a Valley. Chronologically, they were assigned to the Late Lower and Early Middle Pleistocene. In the southern Levant, the definition of Middle Acheulian was rarely used. Assemblages that seem to fall within this category, on the basis of the dominant biface forms, can be also attributed by to the Upper Acheulian. Such, for example, are the assemblages from the excavations at Holon and Umm Qatafa cave layer E. The bifaces are generally elongated, pointed, and roughly made when compared to the fully symmetrical Upper Acheulian types. However, the dates for the Holon site (c. 300-220 thousand years ago), and the Acheulian contexts from Revadim Quarry, are within the range of dates for the Acheulo-Yabrudian entity that stretches from north of the Yakon River, though Mount Carmel into northern Syria. The two Upper Acheulian sites, and many more surface assemblages collected in the Negev desert, are distributed south of the presumed cultural boundary between the Acheulo-Yabrudian and the Upper Acheulian, which cuts across the Levantine ecologies from west to east.
The Upper or Late Acheulian demonstrates a technological tendency to have more use of soft hammer percussion, high degree of artifact symmetry, and the presumed appearance of the Levallois technique. However, the products of this knapping technique are only available in a few assemblages and their frequencies are generally very low. Typologically, the disappearance of core-choppers is noticeable. Bifaces of cordiform and amygdaloid shapes often outnumber the ovates. It seems that in part the variability in metrical attributes between sites reflects differences in the size of raw material that is available in the vicinity of these localities.
The Acheulian sequence in the northern province ends with an entity that is known as either the Acheulo-Yabrudian or the Mugharan Tradition. Three ‘facies’ or combinations of different frequencies of the same tool types are included in this entity: one is dominated by small bifaces (Acheulian); the second contains numerous side scrapers, canted, and transverse scrapers often shaped on thick flakes (Yabrudian); and the last has backed blades as well as rare bifaces (Amudian). Stratigraphically, this entity precedes the Mousterian industries in the central and northern Levant. Its age is derived from thermoluminescence dating (TL) and ESR readings of c. 400/380-250/230 thousand years available for the Acheulo-Yabrudian layers at Tabun cave and the Amudian industry in Qesem cave. Recent work in the Taurus Mountains suggests that this entity originated in the north and spread southward.
Unfortunately, hominid remains from this long period are very rare and include one tooth from ’Ubeidiya, a skull fragment that was found in Acheulian context in Nadaouiyeh in the el-Kowm Basin, and two femurs from Gesher Benot Ya’aqov collected from deposits removed when the Jordan Valley channel was deepened. The best preserved is the fragmentary skull from Zuttiyeh Cave, in Wadi Amud in an Acheulo-Yabrudian context, which is considered as either late H. erectus, or a generalized human type that is known from a larger area within the Old World.
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