The Middle East Crisis in the Pleistocene
Dr. Sireen El ZAATARI
Today, the Levant is considered as a geographic land‐bridge and cultural link for human populations on different continents.
In fact, the Levant has played such a role since the beginning of the Pleistocene around 1.7 million years ago, i.e., the time when hominin populations first exited Africa to occupy other continents. In the Middle and Upper Pleistocene, the earliest evidence of anatomically modern humans outside Africa comes from the Levant. In this second half of the Pleistocene, the Levantine paleoanthropological record is unique in that it shows an alternation of Neandertals’ and modern humans’ occupations in this narrow geographical corridor This places the Levant at the center of two of the most highly debated issues in the field of human evolution: the origin of modern humans and the fate of the Neandertals.
In fact, the Levant has played such a role since the beginning of the Pleistocene around 1.7 million years ago, i.e., the time when hominin populations first exited Africa to occupy other continents. In the Middle and Upper Pleistocene, the earliest evidence of anatomically modern humans outside Africa comes from the Levant. In this second half of the Pleistocene, the Levantine paleoanthropological record is unique in that it shows an alternation of Neandertals’ and modern humans’ occupations in this narrow geographical corridor This places the Levant at the center of two of the most highly debated issues in the field of human evolution: the origin of modern humans and the fate of the Neandertals.