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The People of Mount Carmel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

D. R. Brothwell
D. R. Brothwell
Affiliation:
Duckworth Laboratory of Physical Anthropology Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge
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Extract

In a study of the faunal changes in the Mediterranean area, Higgs (1961) has suggested that the remains from the cave of Mugharet es-Skhūl may be as much as 10,000 years later than those from the levels yielding human remains in the cave of Mugharet et-Tabūn. If this indeed proves to be the case, then a previously controversial problem will to a great extent be eradicated. It is common knowledge that the skulls from these two caves display a remarkable degree of variability ranging from a typical ‘Classic’ Neanderthal type (Tabūn I) to a specimen (Skhūl V) morphologically very similar to certain Upper Palaeolithic skeletons (McCown and Keith, 1939). Three quite different explanations have been given for this, two of which take the Mount Carmel people as approximately contemporaneous:

(1) The Mount Carmel people represent a single taxonomic group with a high degree of variability (McCown and Keith, 1939; Howell, 1951; Le Gros Clark, 1958).

(2) They are hybrids resulting from the intermixture of H. neandertalensis and H. sapiens (Hooton, 1947; Thoma, 1958; Skerlj, 1960; Weckler, 1954).

(3) A final possibility, least considered of all, is that the et-Tabūn and es-Skhūl individuals may correspond to different populations, not necessarily contemporaneous, and which may have lived hundreds or thousands of years apart (Stewart, 1951).

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 27 , December 1961 , pp. 155 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1961

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References

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