Nahal Amud ( he, נחל עמוד), also known as the Wadi al-Amud, is a

stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream ...

in the

Upper Galilee The Upper Galilee ( he, הגליל העליון, ''HaGalil Ha'Elyon''; ar, الجليل الأعلى, ''Al Jaleel Al A'alaa'') is a geographical-political term in use since the end of the Second Temple period. It originally referred to a mountai ...

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 flows into the

Sea of Galilee The Sea of Galilee ( he, יָם כִּנֶּרֶת, Judeo-Aramaic: יַמּא דטבריא, גִּנֵּיסַר, ar, بحيرة طبريا), also called Lake Tiberias, Kinneret or Kinnereth, is a freshwater lake in Israel. It is the lowest ...

History

The source of the stream, Ramat Dalton, is located 800 meters above sea level. Its

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, t ...

includes the peaks of Mount Canaan (955 meters) and

Mount Meron Mount Meron ( he, הַר מֵירוֹן, ''Har Meron''; ar, جبل الجرمق, ''Jabal al-Jarmaq'') is a mountain in the Upper Galilee region of Israel. It has special significance in Jewish religious tradition and parts of it have been decla ...

(1,204 meters) and flows south through eastern Galilee to the northwest part of the Sea of Galilee – a height of less than 200 meters below

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardised g ...

. The stream is named after a

pillar A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression (physical), compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column i ...

that rises high above ground and is located near a channel of the stream near Kibbutz

Hukok Hukok ( he, חוּקוֹק) is a kibbutz in Israel. Located near the Sea of Galilee and the cities of Tiberias and Safed, it falls under the jurisdiction of Emek HaYarden Regional Council. In it had a population of . History In 1945, the Hukok ...

. The gorge that forms the channel at this point holds many caves once inhabited by ''

Homo heidelbergensis ''Homo heidelbergensis'' (also ''H. sapiens heidelbergensis''), sometimes called Heidelbergs, is an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human which existed during the Middle Pleistocene. It was subsumed as a subspecies of ''H. erectus'' in ...

'' and later by

Neanderthal Man 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 ...

such as the cave at Zuttiyeh and the

Amud cave Amud Cave is located in the Upper Galilee, in the Nahal Amud gorge. It is situated about above Nahal Amud, right next to and above the famous pillar (amud, in Hebrew) for which Nahal Amud is named. The cave was excavated by a Japanese expedition ...

. They were the object of the first paleoanthropological excavations in

Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine ( ar, فلسطين الانتدابية '; he, פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָה (א״י) ', where "E.Y." indicates ''’Eretz Yiśrā’ēl'', the Land of Israel) was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 ...

in 1925–1926. The caves contained

hominin The Hominini form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae ("hominines"). Hominini includes the extant genera ''Homo'' (humans) and '' Pan'' (chimpanzees and bonobos) and in standard usage excludes the genus ''Gorilla'' (gorillas). The t ...

remains as well as

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 latt ...

and

Acheulean Acheulean (; also Acheulian and Mode II), from the French ''acheuléen'' after the type site of Saint-Acheul, is an archaeological industry of stone tool manufacture characterized by the distinctive oval and pear-shaped "hand axes" associated ...

artifacts. Most of Nahal Amud (8923

dunam A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; tr, dönüm; he, דונם), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area equivalent to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amount ...

s) was declared a nature reserve in 1972.

References

External links

Amud stream @ eretz.com
Rivers of Israel Nature reserves in Israel Archaeological sites in Israel Prehistoric sites in Israel Protected areas of Northern District (Israel) Neanderthal sites Sea of Galilee Galilee {{paleo-site-stub

History

See also

References

External links