Introduction: Goals and Challenges.

This book is about the hunter-gatherers living in the land regions of the south-eastern Mediterranean basin between 130,000 and 10,000 years ago, a span of time encompassing the previous warm interglacial stage (MIS 5) and the last ice age (MIS 2), representing the Upper Pleistocene. The 120,000 years that are the focus of this book form a period of dramatic cultural developments. At the beginning of this period, there were two hominin species in the Mediterranean region of Europe and South-West Asia: Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and some of the earliest representatives of modern humans, our own species (Homo sapiens). The Neanderthals became extinct well before the end of the last ice age, leaving not just the Mediterranean area, but the whole globe, to our modern human ancestors. On the other hand, the southern coast of the Mediterranean, on the African continent, was radically different from its bordering Eurasian lands as it was inhabited by Homo sapiens populations much earlier (since at least 200 ka BP, most likely earlier) and Neanderthals did not exist anywhere in Africa. The period under consideration was an eventful one, not only in terms of human developments. There were also dramatic changes in climate. Significant fluctuations in rainfall and water resource availability had a strong impact on human settlements in several areas of North Africa and the Levant, with interglacial, warm and rainy periods, and glacial, cool and arid intervals. Important focuses of this book are the spread of anatomically modern humans from their African homeland, the transition from the Middle Palaeolithic/Middle Stone Age to the Upper Palaeolithic/Later Stone Age some time between c. 45 and 30 ka ago, and also the beginning of a totally new way of life, by 10 ka ago, based on plant cultivation and animal husbandry.