Tabūn

Tabūn, site of paleoanthropological excavations in a deep rock shelter located on the edge of Mount Carmel and facing the Mediterranean Sea in northern Israel. Artifacts discovered in a long sequence of deposits at this site document patterns of change in stone-tool manufacture during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic periods. This record has become the reference scale for human technological evolution in southwestern Asia between 300,000 and 50,000–100,000 years ago. From 1929 to 1934 Tabūn also yielded a series of fossil remains from the Lower and Middle Paleolithic. The fossils suggest that Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and early modern humans (H. sapiens) alternately occupied the region.

Fossils from Lower Paleolithic levels at Tabūn are fragmentary and indicate only the strongly built nature of the humans who occupied the site. Scattered fossils from early Middle Paleolithic layers include incomplete limb bones and a complete lower jaw. The limb bones are characteristic of Neanderthals, whereas the lower jaw has a combination of Neanderthal and earlier features. These fossils date from more than 150,000 years ago and thus precede most Neanderthal remains by 100,000 years. Their combination of traits documents a gradual emergence of Neanderthal facial features in southwestern Asia during this period.

Fossils from later Middle Paleolithic layers include several isolated teeth and a woman’s skeleton found buried along the side of the cave. Although small and lightly built, the female possessed a suite of features known from Neanderthals elsewhere, including relatively large and heavily worn front teeth, prominent browridges, certain details of the ear region, and stocky, cold-adapted body proportions.

Together with remains of very linear, heat-adapted humans from the Israeli sites of Skhūl and Qafzeh, dating to about 90,000 years ago, the Tabūn fossils document an alternating occupation of the Levant during the Middle Paleolithic. Neanderthals appear to have spread southward into the region (apparently from Anatolia and the Caucasus) during cold phases, whereas early modern humans spread northward from Africa during the intervening warm phases. This record indicates an ecological separation of the two groups for tens of thousands of years during this period of human evolution.