The Jabroudian culture is a cultural phase of the Middle Paleolithic of the

Levant The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is ...

. It broadly belongs to the

Mousterian The Mousterian (or Mode III) is an archaeological industry of stone tools, associated primarily with the Neanderthals in Europe, and to the earliest anatomically modern humans in North Africa and West Asia. The Mousterian largely defines the l ...

culture, and shows connections with the European facies La Quina. One of the most noticeable elements is the so-called ''Amoudian'' elements, that are the first known stone blades ever. Nevertheless, the connection of this ''Amoudian'' innovations with later

Upper Paleolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coin ...

blades is most likely null.

Etymology

German prehistoric archaeologist, Alfred Rust, named the period after

Yabroud Yabroud or Yabrud ( ar, يَبْرُود, Yabrūd) is a city in Syria, located in the '' Rif Dimashq'' (i.e. Damascus' countryside) governorate about north of the capital Damascus. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Yab ...

(spelled as Jabrud in German) in Syria, where caves carved into the cliffs of the wadi (valley) of Skifta found near it.

Tools

The thick layers of Jabroudian consist mainly in heavy scratchers and hand axes. The proportion of the first type of tools tends to increase as time passes, while the axes show a decrease even totally disappearing in the upper layer of some Jabroudian sites.

''Amoudian'' blades

A most interesting facet of Jabroudian culture are the so-called ''Amoudian'' blade tools. This is the earliest known stone blade industry ever and it's always found inserted in Jabroudian sites, with both "cultures" being inseparable. As with the hand axes, the proportion of stone blades decreases with time, until it finally vanishes with the end of Yabrudian culture. There is a gap of c. 10,000 years between the end of this blade tradition and the appearance of

technology, based precisely on stone blades.

Human remains

The only human remain associated with this culture is a skull found in the cave of Zuttiyeh, in the Galilee region of

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

, that belongs to a

Neanderthal Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While the ...

Hunting

There is evidence that the Jabroudian people hunted a wide array of animals:

elephant Elephants are the largest existing land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantidae ...

rhinoceros A rhinoceros (; ; ), commonly abbreviated to rhino, is a member of any of the five extant species (or numerous extinct species) of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. (It can also refer to a member of any of the extinct species ...

, antelopes and small animals are all found in their sites.

End of Jabroudian

The end of this culture is associated to the introduction of other (also Mousterian) cultural trends, of Levalloisian tradition, that were widely distributed through

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

and

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...

References

Bibliography

* M. H. Alimen and M. J. Steve, ''Historia Universal siglo XXI. Prehistoria''. Siglo XXI Editores, 1970 (reviewed and corrected in 1994) (original German edition, 1966, titled ''Vorgeschichte''). {{ISBN, 84-323-0034-9 Paleolithic Archaeology of the Near East Mousterian