Antelias Cave was a large cave located east of

Antelias Antelias ( ar, أنطلياس) is a city in Lebanon in the Matn District of the Mount Lebanon Governorate. It is located around 5 km to the north of Beirut. Etymology The name is originally Greek, ἀντήλιος – from ἀντί(an ...

, northeast of

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

close to the wadi of

Ksar Akil Ksar Akil (also Ksar 'Akil or Ksar Aqil) is an archeological site northeast of Beirut in Lebanon. It is located about west of Antelias spring on the north bank of the northern tributary of the Wadi Antelias. It is a large rock shelter below ...

. It was discovered by Heidenborg in 1833.

Godefroy Zumoffen Reverend Father Godefroy Zumoffen (1848 in France – 1928) was a French Jesuit archaeologist and geologist notable for his work on prehistory in Lebanon. He is known particularly for pioneering Lebanese archaeology, and for discovering sever ...

made an excavation in 1893, finding an

Aurignacian The Aurignacian () is an archaeological industry of the Upper Paleolithic associated with European early modern humans (EEMH) lasting from 43,000 to 26,000 years ago. The Upper Paleolithic developed in Europe some time after the Levant, where ...

industry amongst large quantities of bones and flints.

Henri Fleisch Reverend Father Henri Fleisch (1 January 1904 – 10 February 1985) was a French archaeologist, missionary and Orientalist, known for his work on classical Arabic language and Lebanese dialect and prehistory in Lebanon. Fleisch spent years rec ...

re-examined the material from Zumoffen's excavation and concluded that it was not solely Aurignacian but showed evidence of successive industries present as late as the

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several pa ...

. Raoul Desribes also excavated the site and found numerous tools made of bone including two harpoons which are now in the Museum of Lebanese Prehistory.

Auguste Bergy Reverend Father Auguste Bergy (12 May 1873 – 31 August 1955) was a French Jesuit archaeologist known for his work on prehistory in Lebanon. He is known particularly for excavations and studies at the Sands of Beirut and at Ras Beirut Ras ...

also made a small excavation here and another sounding was made possibly in 1948 by J. Ewing who described the industry as ''"transitional,

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 ...

-to-

Mesolithic The Mesolithic ( Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymo ...

"''.

Dirk Albert Hooijer Dirk Albert Hooijer (30 May 1919 – 26 November 1993) was a Dutch paleontologist. Hooijer was born in Medan on Sumatra, but spent his youth in Bogor on Java. In 1932, his family moved to The Hague where he finished his high school education at Da ...

studied the fauna from the cave and found Dama and Capra to have been predominant.

finds included a long, denticulated, lustrous blade. Bones of a human

foetus A fetus or foetus (; plural fetuses, feti, foetuses, or foeti) is the unborn offspring that develops from an animal embryo. Following embryonic development the fetal stage of development takes place. In human prenatal development, fetal develo ...

were also found in the cave by Delore in 1901 which were published by Vallois in 1957 as being possibly Neolithic in date.Vallois, H., Le Sqelette de foetus humain fossile d'Antelias, Quaternaria, vol. 4, 1957. Collections from the cave can be found in the

Musée de l'Homme The Musée de l'Homme (French, "Museum of Mankind" or "Museum of Humanity") is an anthropology museum in Paris, France. It was established in 1937 by Paul Rivet for the 1937 ''Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne ...

, Paris, Museum of Lebanese Prehistory and the Archaeological Museum of the American University of Beirut. Antelias cave was destroyed by

dynamite Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents (such as powdered shells or clay), and stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern Germany, and patented in 1867. It rapidl ...

in the spring of 1964 due to quarrying in the area. Lorraine Copeland and Peter J. Wescombe recovered some cave deposits from which they hoped to extract material for

radio-carbon dating Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was dev ...

Footnotes

External links

The Natural History Museum Catalogue of Fossil Hominids

University of Cologne Radio-Carbon context database entry for Antelias cave
{{Authority control Neolithic settlements Archaeological sites in Lebanon

Further reading

Footnotes

External links