Early Upper Pleistocene Adaptations in the Levant¹

Human remains firmly associated with Mousterian artifacts and exhibiting characteristics transitional between those of Neanderthal and fully modern man are known from two Levantine sites. A survey of the archeological evidence suggests that three climatic zones were differentially exploited by Neanderthal man and that some of the sites document a shift in subsistence away from a generalized hunting pattern to the specialized hunting of large, migratory herd animals. The hypothesis is offered that the formal changes documented for the Upper Paleolithic occurred in response to this basic shift in human ecology.