Climate and Post-Glacial expansion in the Near East

The Kebaran culture, also known as the Early Near East Epipalaeolithic, was an archaeological culture in the Eastern Mediterranean area (c. 23,000 to 15,000 BP), named after its type site, Kebara Cave south of

Haifa Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropol ...

. The Kebaran were a highly mobile nomadic population, composed of hunters and gatherers 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 ...

and Sinai areas who used

microlithic A microlith is a small Rock (geology), stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 35,000 to 3,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia an ...

tools.

Overview

The Kebaran is the last

Upper Paleolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coin ...

phase of the

. Kebaran stone tool assemblages are characterized by small,

geometric microliths A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 35,000 to 3,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. The ...

, and are thought to have lacked the specialized grinders and pounders found in later

Near Eastern The ''Near East''; he, המזרח הקרוב; arc, ܕܢܚܐ ܩܪܒ; fa, خاور نزدیک, Xāvar-e nazdik; tr, Yakın Doğu is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region in Western Asia, that was once the hist ...

cultures. Small stone tools called

microlith A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 35,000 to 3,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. Th ...

s and retouched bladelets can be found for the first time. The microliths of this culture period differ greatly from the Aurignacian artifacts. The Kebaran is preceded by the Athlitian phase of the Upper Paleolithic

Levantine Aurignacian The Levantine Aurignacian (35,000-29,000 BP, calibrated, 32,000-26,000 BP, non-calibrated) is an Upper Paleolithic culture of the Near-Eastern Levant that evolved from the Emiran culture. It was named so because of the similarity of stone tools ...

(formerly called

Antelian The Levantine Aurignacian (35,000-29,000 BP, calibrated, 32,000-26,000 BP, non-calibrated) is an Upper Paleolithic culture of the Near-Eastern Levant that evolved from the Emiran culture. It was named so because of the similarity of stone tools ...

) and followed by the proto-agrarian Natufian culture of the Epipalaeolithic. The appearance of the Kebaran culture, of

ic type implies a significant rupture in the cultural continuity of Levantine Upper Paleolithic. The Kebaran culture, with its use of microliths, is associated with the use of the bow and arrow and the domestication of the dog. The Kebaran is also characterised by the earliest collecting of wild cereals, known due to the uncovering of grain grinding tools. It was the first step towards the Neolithic Revolution. The Kebaran people are believed to have practiced dispersal to upland environments in the summer, and aggregation in caves and rockshelters near lowland lakes in the winter. This diversity of environments may be the reason for the variety of tools found in their kits. Situated in the Terminal

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

, the Kebaran is classified as an Epipalaeolithic society. They are generally thought to have been ancestral to the later

Natufian The Natufian culture () is a Late Epipaleolithic archaeological culture of the Levant, dating to around 15,000 to 11,500 years ago. The culture was unusual in that it supported a sedentary or semi-sedentary population even before the introducti ...

culture that occupied much of the same range, Mellaart, James (1976), ''Neolithic of the Near East'' (

Macmillan Publishers Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the 'Big Five' English language publ ...

) who advanced the use of wild grains, building on the Kebaran traits to acquire some symptoms of permanent settlements, agriculture, and hints of civilization.

Artistic expression

Evidence for symbolic behavior of Late Pleistocene foragers in the Levant has been found in engraved limestone plaquettes from the Epipaleolithic open-air site Ein Qashish South in the

Jezreel Valley The Jezreel Valley (from the he, עמק יזרעאל, translit. ''ʿĒmeq Yīzrəʿēʿl''), or Marj Ibn Amir ( ar, مرج ابن عامر), also known as the Valley of Megiddo, is a large fertile plain and inland valley in the Northern Distr ...

, Israel. The engravings were uncovered in Kebaran and Geometric Kebaran deposits (ca. 23,000 and ca. 16,500 BP), and include the image of a bird, the first figurative representation known so far from a pre-Natufian Epipaleolithic site, together with geometric motifs such as chevrons, cross-hatchings and ladders. Some of the engravings closely resemble roughly contemporary European finds, and may be interpreted as "systems of notations" or "artificial memory systems" related to the timing of seasonal resources and related important events for nomadic groups. Similar looking signs and patterns are well known from the context of the local

, a final Epipaleolithic period when sedentary or semi-sedentary foragers started practicing agriculture. CC-BY icon

Material was adapted from this source, which is available under
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
The engravings found in Ein Qashish South involve symbolic conceptualization. They suggest that the figurative and non-figurative images comprise a coherent assemblage of symbols that might have been applied in order to store, share and transmit information related to the social activities and the subsistence of mobile bands. They also suggest a level of social complexity in pre-Natufian foragers in the Levant. The apparent similarity in graphics throughout the Late Pleistocene world and the mode of their application support the possibility that symbolic behavior has a common and much earlier origin. CC-BY icon

Material was adapted from this source, which is available under
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Artifacts

File:Kebaran Culture Flint Knife.jpg, Flint knife, Kebaran culture, 22000-18000 BP File:Kebaran culture microliths 22000-18000 BP.jpg, Kebaran culture microliths, 22000-18000 BP File:Microlith productions, Kebaran culture, 22,000-18,000 BP, Israel (detail).jpg, Microlith productions, Kebaran culture, 22,000-18,000 BP File:Microlith tools from Ein Qashish South, Jezreel Valley, Israel, Kebaran and Geometric Kebaran deposits (ca. 23ka and ca. 16.5ka BP).jpg, Microlith tools from Ein Qashish South, Jezreel Valley, Israel, Kebaran and Geometric Kebaran deposits (ca. 23ka and ca. 16.5ka BP) File:Associations of wild cereals and other wild grasses in northern Israel.jpg, Associations of wild cereals and other wild grasses in northern Israel

Overview

Artistic expression

Artifacts

References

Further reading