Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-xfwgj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-24T16:49:12.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The People of Mount Carmel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

D. R. Brothwell
D. R. Brothwell
Affiliation:
Duckworth Laboratory of Physical Anthropology Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In a study of the faunal changes in the Mediterranean area, Higgs (1961) has suggested that the remains from the cave of Mugharet es-Skhūl may be as much as 10,000 years later than those from the levels yielding human remains in the cave of Mugharet et-Tabūn. If this indeed proves to be the case, then a previously controversial problem will to a great extent be eradicated. It is common knowledge that the skulls from these two caves display a remarkable degree of variability ranging from a typical ‘Classic’ Neanderthal type (Tabūn I) to a specimen (Skhūl V) morphologically very similar to certain Upper Palaeolithic skeletons (McCown and Keith, 1939). Three quite different explanations have been given for this, two of which take the Mount Carmel people as approximately contemporaneous:

(1) The Mount Carmel people represent a single taxonomic group with a high degree of variability (McCown and Keith, 1939; Howell, 1951; Le Gros Clark, 1958).

(2) They are hybrids resulting from the intermixture of H. neandertalensis and H. sapiens (Hooton, 1947; Thoma, 1958; Skerlj, 1960; Weckler, 1954).

(3) A final possibility, least considered of all, is that the et-Tabūn and es-Skhūl individuals may correspond to different populations, not necessarily contemporaneous, and which may have lived hundreds or thousands of years apart (Stewart, 1951).

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 27 , December 1961 , pp. 155 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1961

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bordes, Fr. ‘Le Passage du Paléolithique moyen au Paléolithique supérieur’, in Neanderthal Centenary, 1856–1956. Utrecht, 1958.Google Scholar
Breitinger, Emil. ‘Zur Morphologie und systematischen Stellung des Schädelfragmentes von Swanscombe’, Homo, vol. 3 (1952), 131–3.Google Scholar
Brothwell, D. R. ‘Skull from the Niah Cave, Sarawak’, Sarawak Mus. J. In press (1961).Google Scholar
SirClark, Wilfred Le Gros. ‘Bones of Contention’, J. R. Anthrop. Inst., vol. 88 (1958), 131–45.Google Scholar
Harrisson, Tom. ‘Radio Carbon—C-14 Datings B.C. from Niah: a Note’, Sarawak Mus. J., vol. 9 (1959) 136–8.Google Scholar
Heberer, Gerhard. ‘Das Präsapiens-Problem’, in Moderne Biologie, Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Hans Nachtsheim, Grüneberg, H. and Ulrich, W., eds., 131–62. Berlin, 1950.Google Scholar
Higgs, E. ‘Some Pleistocene Faunas of the Mediterranean Coastal Areas’, Proc. Prehist. Soc., XXVII (1961).Google Scholar
Hooton, Earnest Albert. Up from the Ape. New York, 1947.Google Scholar
Howell, F. Clark. ‘The Place of the Neanderthal Man in Human Evolution’, Amer. J. Phys. Anthrop., vol. 9 (1951), 379–416.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Howell, F. Clark ‘Upper Pleistocene Men of the Southwest Asian Mousterian’, in Neanderthal Centenary, 1856–1956, 185–98. Utrecht, 1958.Google Scholar
SirKeith, Arthur. A New Theory of Human Evolution. London, 1948.Google Scholar
Leakey, L. S. B. ‘New Finds at Olduvai Gorge’, Nature, vol. 189 (1961), 649–50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCown, Theodore D. and SirKeith, Arthur. The Stone Age of Mount Carmel. The Fossil Human Remains from the Levalloiso-Mousterian, vol. 2. Oxford, 1939.Google Scholar
Montagu, M. F. Ashley. An Introduction to Physical Anthropology. Illinois, 1951.Google Scholar
Škerlj, B. ‘Were Neanderthalers the Only Inhabitants of Krapina?’ Bull. Scient., vol. 4 (1958), 44.Google Scholar
Škerlj, B. ‘Human Evolution and Neanderthal Man’, Antiquity, vol. 34 (1950), 90–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, T. D. ‘The Problem of the Earliest Claimed Representatives of Homo sapiens’, Cold Spring Harbour Symp. Quant. Biol., vol. 15 (1951), 97–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, T. D. ‘The Restored Shanidar I Skull’, Smithsonian Report for 1958, 473–80. Washington, 1959.Google Scholar
Thoma, A. ‘Métissage ou Transformation? Essai sur les Hommes Fossiles de Palestine’, L'Anthropologie, t. 61 (1957), 470–502; t. 62 (1958), 30–52.Google Scholar
Vallois, Henri V. ‘Neandertals and Praesapiens’, J. R. Anthrop. Inst., vol. 84 (1954), 111–30.Google Scholar
Weckler, J. E. ‘The Relationships between Neanderthal Man and Homo sapiens’, Am. Anthrop., vol. 56 (1954), 1003–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar