Human Paleoecology in the Levantine Corridor

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, colonized 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 ContentsIntroduction (Naama Goren-Inbar and john D. Speth)1. The Levantine waterway, Riparian archaeology , paleolimnology and conservation (Dov. F. Por)2. Quaternary Lake Margins of the Levant rift valley (Craig S. Feibel)3. Hippos, pigs, bovids, saber-toothed tigers, monkeys and hominids: dispersals through the Levantine Corridor during Late Plioscene and Early Pleistocene times (Bienvenido Martinez-Navarro)4. Ecological interactions of Elephantids in pleistocene Eurasia, Palaeoloxodon and Mammuthus (Adrian M. Lister)5. Long-term continuity of a freshwater tutle (Mauremys caspica rivulata) population in the Northern Jordan Valley and its paleoenvironmental implications (Gideon Hartman)6. Early hominid subsistence in the Levant: Taphonomic studies of the Plio-Pleistocene 'Ubeidiya Formation (Israel) - evidence from 'Ubeidiya Layer II-24 (Sabine Gaudzinski)7. Bands and other corporate hominid groups in Acheulian culture (Emanuel Marx)8. Culture and genes in the evolution of human language (Daniel Dor and Eva Jablonka)9. Climate variability in the Levant and northeast Africa during the Late Quaternary based on marine and land records (Ahuva Almmogi-Labin, Miryam Bar-Matthews and Avner Ayalon)10. Dental pathology, stressful events, and disease in Levantine early anatomically modern humansL evidence from Qafzeh)11. Hunting pressure, subsistence intensification and demographic change in the Levantine Late Middle Palaeolithic (John D. Speth)12. Wetland drainage in the Levant (Lake Hula, Amik Golu and el-Azraq Oasis): impact on avian fauna (Shoshana Ashkenazi)13. "A feather for each wind that blows": Utilizing avifauna in assessing changing patterns in palaeoecology and subsistence at Jordan Valley archaeological sties (Tal Simmons)14. Natufian behaviour in the Hula bain: the question of territorialiy (Francois R. Valla)