Bridging the gap between in and out of Africa.

The span of time between 130,000 and 10,000 years ago, the Upper Pleistocene, encompassed a period of dramatic cultural developments in the south-eastern Mediterranean basin. This paper is the concluding chapter of a book that highlights and synthesizes the latest discoveries on the most topical issues in current scientific debate on the archaeology of this time period in North Africa and the Near East. Current archaeological research in previously poorly known North Africa has brought this region to play a decisive role in the world’s scientific debates. After decades of neglect, the archaeological record from North Africa parallels in significance and importance that from the Near East and this chapter offers an opportunity to observe the Afro-Asian side of the Mediterranean basin as an uninterrupted land, so much as it must have been for its Upper Pleistocene inhabitants.