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Cultural and Biological Transformations in the Middle Pleistocene Levant: A View from Qesem Cave, Israel

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Dynamics of Learning in Neanderthals and Modern Humans Volume 1

Part of the book series: Replacement of Neanderthals by Modern Humans Series ((RNMH))

Abstract

In this paper we present our interpretation about the circumstances leading towards an evolutionary replacement of the earliest populations of the Levant, most probably Homo erectus (senso lato), by a new hominin lineage during the Middle Pleistocene, some 400,000 years ago. Our model suggests that dietary stress caused by the disappearance of elephants triggered the replacement of Homo erectus, a hominin highly dependent on consuming large animals, by a new hominin lineage that was better adapted to hunting larger numbers of smaller and faster animals in order to provide sufficient caloric intake to compensate for the loss of the elephants. The biological replacement took place in tandem with significant cultural changes embodied in a new, unique and innovative, local cultural complex in the Levant. It is our contention that the appearance of a new creative set of behaviors in the Levant some 400,000 years ago must have been accompanied by innovative cultural transmission mechanisms of a different nature than those practiced during earlier Lower Paleolithic times. These new learning behaviors must have played a significant role in the adoption and assimilation of new hunting methods, meat sharing, flint procurement and flint production strategies, as well as in the earliest habitual use of fire. The new cultural traits characterized humans in the Levant for a long period of over 200,000 years, to be replaced by the Middle Paleolithic Mousterian Cultural Complex created by both Modern humans and Neanderthals.

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Acknowledgements

The Qesem Cave excavation project is supported by the Israel Science Foundation, CARE Archaeological Foundation, Leakey Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Thyssen Foundation and the Dan David Foundation. We wish to thank our friends and colleagues J. Rosell, R. Blasco, G. Boschian, D., Saccà and M. Mussi for their kind assistance in providing information and photographs as well as fruitful discussions and thoughts. However, our thoughts and hypothesis presented in this paper remain our own responsibility.

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  1. Department of Archaeology, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Ran Barkai & Avi Gopher

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  1. Ran Barkai
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Correspondence to Ran Barkai .

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  1. Research Institute, Kochi University of Technology, Kami-shi, Kochi, Japan

    Takeru Akazawa

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    Yoshihiro Nishiaki

  3. Tokyo, Japan

    Kenichi Aoki

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Barkai, R., Gopher, A. (2013). Cultural and Biological Transformations in the Middle Pleistocene Levant: A View from Qesem Cave, Israel. In: Akazawa, T., Nishiaki, Y., Aoki, K. (eds) Dynamics of Learning in Neanderthals and Modern Humans Volume 1. Replacement of Neanderthals by Modern Humans Series. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54511-8_7

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