Human Paleoecology in the Levantine Corridor

Naama Goren-Inbar, John D. Speth

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781785709654
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Few areas of the world have played as prominent a role in human evolution as the Levantine Corridor, a comparatively narrow strip of land sandwiched between the Mediterranean Sea on the west and the expanse of inhospitable desert to the east. The first hominids to leave Africa, over 1.5 million years ago, first entered the Levant before spreading into what is now Europe and Asia. About 100,000 years ago another African exodus, this time of anatomically modern humans, colonised the Levant before expanding into Eurasia. Toward the end of the Pleistocene, this Corridor also witnessed some of the earliest steps toward economic and social intensification, perhaps the most radical change in hominid lifestyle that ultimately paved the way for sedentary communities wholly dependent on domestic animals and cultivated plants.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Book title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Introduction: Naama Goren-Inbar and John D. Speth
• Chapter I – The Levantine Waterway, Riparian Archaeology, Paleolimnology, and Conservation: Dov F. Por
• Chapter II – Quaternary Lake Margins of the Levant Rift Valley: Craig S. Feibel
• Chapter III – Hippos, Pigs, Bovids, Saber-toothed Tigers, Monkeys, and Hominids: Dispersals through the Levantine Corridor during Late Pliocene and Early Pleistocene Times: Bienvenido Martínez-Navarro
• Chapter IV – Ecological Interactions of Elephantids in Pleistocene Eurasia: Palaeoloxodon and Mammuthus: Adrian M. Lister
• Chapter V – Long-term Continuity of a Freshwater Turtle (Mauremys caspica rivulata) Population in the Northern Jordan Valley and its Paleoenvironmental Implications: Gideon Hartman
• Chapter VI – Early Hominid Subsistence in the Levant: Taphonomic Studies of the Plio-Pleistocene ‘Ubeidiya Formation (Israel) – Evidence from ‘Ubeidiya Layer II-24: Sabine Gaudzinski
• Chapter VII – Bands and Other Corporate Hominid Groups in Acheulian Culture: Emanuel Marx
• Chapter VIII – Culture and Genes in the Evolution of Human Language: Daniel Dor and Eva Jablonka
• Chapter IX – Climate Variability in the Levant and Northeast Africa during the Late Quaternary Based on Marine and Land Records: Ahuva Almogi-Labin, Miryam Bar-Matthews and Avner Ayalon
• Chapter X – Dental Pathology, Stressful Events, and Disease in Levantine Early Anatomically Modern Humans: Evidence from Qafzeh: Anne-Marie Tillier, Henry Duday, Baruch Arensburg and Bernard Vandermeersch
• Chapter XI – Hunting Pressure, Subsistence Intensification, and Demographic Change in the Levantine Late Middle Paleolithic: John D. Speth
• Chapter XII – Wetland Drainage in the Levant (Lake Hula, Amik Gölü, and el-Azraq Oasis): Impact on Avian Fauna: Shoshana Ashkenazi
• Chapter XIII – ”A Feather for Each Wind that Blows”: Utilizing Avifauna in Assessing Changing Patterns in Paleoecology and Subsistence at Jordan Valley Archaeological Sites: Tal Simmons
• Chapter XIV – Natufian Behavior in the Hula Basin: The Question of Territoriality: François R. Valla
• Back cover