Amud Cave is located in the

Upper Galilee The Upper Galilee ( he, הגליל העליון, ''HaGalil Ha'Elyon''; ar, الجليل الأعلى, ''Al Jaleel Al A'alaa'') is a geographical-political term in use since the end of the Second Temple period. It originally referred to a mounta ...

, in the Nahal Amud gorge. It is situated about above Nahal Amud, right next to and above the famous pillar (amud, in

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

) for which Nahal Amud is named. The cave was excavated by a Japanese expedition in 1961 and, again, in 1964. Excavations were renewed in 1990 by a joint Israeli-American team that included archaeologists, anatomists and anthropologists. Two major phases of occupation have been identified on the site: the later one beginning at around 3000 BC, characterized by numerous pottery sherds, stone tools and garbage pits (that often disturb lower layers) but no permanent structures, and an earlier one from the Middle Paleolithic. The most important find from this site is Amud 1, discovered in 1961, in the latest Paleolithic layers, that were later dated, using thermoluminescence, to 50-60,000 years BP. It has been classified as

Neanderthal Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While the ...

, which makes it the youngest Neanderthal ever to have been discovered in the

Levant The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is ...

References

{{Authority control Caves of Israel Archaeology of Israel Prehistoric Israel Archaeological sites in Israel 1961 archaeological discoveries Asian archaeology Upper Galilee Neanderthal sites

Further reading

References