Kebara Cave ( he, מערת כבארה, Me'arat Kebbara, ar, مغارة الكبارة, Mugharat al-Kabara) is a

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

cave A cave or cavern is a natural void in the ground, specifically a space large enough for a human to enter. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. The word ''cave'' can refer to smaller openings such as sea ...

locality in Wadi Kebara, situated at

above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as ''orthometric heights''. The comb ...

on the western

escarpment An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations. The terms ''scarp'' and ''scarp face'' are often used interchangeably with ''escar ...

of the Carmel Range, in the

Ramat HaNadiv Ramat Hanadiv ( he, רמת הנדיב, ''Heights of the Benefactor''), is a nature park and garden in northern Israel, covering at the southern end of Mount Carmel between Zikhron Ya'akov to the north and Binyamina to the south. The Jewish Nati ...

preserve of

Zichron Yaakov Zikhron Ya'akov ( he, זִכְרוֹן יַעֲקֹב, ''lit.'' "Jacob's Memorial"; often shortened to just ''Zikhron'') is a town in Israel, south of Haifa, and part of the Haifa District. It is located at the southern end of the Carmel mounta ...

History

The cave was inhabited between 60,000 and 48,000 BP and is famous for its excavated finds of

hominid The Hominidae (), whose members are known as the great apes or hominids (), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: '' Pongo'' (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); ''Gorilla'' (the east ...

remains.

Dorothy Garrod Dorothy Annie Elizabeth Garrod, CBE, FBA (5 May 1892 – 18 December 1968) was an English archaeologist who specialised in the Palaeolithic period. She held the position of Disney Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge from 1 ...

and

Francis Turville-Petre Francis Adrian Joseph Turville-Petre (4 March 1901 – 16 August 1942) was a British archaeologist, famous for the discovery of the ''Homo heidelbergensis'' fossil Galilee Man in 1926, and for his work at Mount Carmel, in what was then the Briti ...

excavated in the cave in the early 1930s. Excavations have since yielded a large number of human remains associated with a

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 ...

archaeological context. The first specimen discovered in 1965, during the excavations of M. Stekelis, was an incomplete infant skeleton (Kebara 1).New human remains from Kebara Cave (Mount Carmel
/ref> The most significant discovery made at Kebara Cave was

Kebara 2 Kebara 2 (or Kebara Mousterian Hominid 2, KMH2) is a 60,000 year-old Levantine Neanderthal mid-body male skeleton. It was discovered in 1983 by Ofer Bar-Yosef, Baruch Arensburg, and Bernard Vandermeersch in a Mousterian layer of Kebara Cave, Isr ...

in 1982, the most complete postcranial

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 th ...

skeleton A skeleton is the structural frame that supports the body of an animal. There are several types of skeletons, including the exoskeleton, which is the stable outer shell of an organism, the endoskeleton, which forms the support structure inside ...

found to date. Nicknamed "Moshe" and dating to ''circa'' 60,000 BP, the skeleton preserved a large part of one individual's torso (

vertebral column The vertebral column, also known as the backbone or spine, is part of the axial skeleton. The vertebral column is the defining characteristic of a vertebrate in which the notochord (a flexible rod of uniform composition) found in all chordata, ...

, ribs and

pelvis The pelvis (plural pelves or pelvises) is the lower part of the trunk, between the abdomen and the thighs (sometimes also called pelvic region), together with its embedded skeleton (sometimes also called bony pelvis, or pelvic skeleton). The ...

). The

cranium The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, the ...

and most of the lower limbs were missing. The hyoid bone was also preserved, and was the first Neanderthal hyoid bone found. Mithen, S.(2006). The Singing Neanderthals: The origins of music, language, mind, and body. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. The Kebaran culture is named after the site.

References

External links

Ramat Hanadiv
- the Rothschild Memorial public gardens at

preserve the Kebara Cave within their boundaries for visitors
Kebara Cave
at About.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Kebara 1930s archaeological discoveries Caves of Israel Neanderthal sites Prehistoric sites in Israel Archaeological type sites Mount Carmel Mousterian Kebaran culture

History

See also

References

Further reading

External links