Thirty Years of Research into the Prehistory of Eretz-Israel and the Neighbouring Countries / שלושים שנות מחקר הפריהיסטוריה של ארץ-ישראל ושכנותיה

After seventy-five years of unsystematic attempts, prehistoric research proper in Palestine and the neighbouring countries began in 1925. Up to the present, 34 sites have been tackled which convey a useful, but by no means final picture. The most salient feature is the climatic change connected with the end of the Ice Age — from humid to arid — which caused a general impoverishment of plant and animal life; hence the emigration to Europe of a large part of the population, which until then seems to have maintained a higher cultural level than its European contemporaries. The article reviews the various prehistoric periods, as they present themselves in Palestine and the neighbouring countries. The Pleistocene has been tentatively subdivided into rainy periods, parallel to glacial periods in Europe. Here we find traces of the oldest culture so far discovered locally, which seems to have originated in South Africa. The Middle Palaeolithic in Palestine is characterized by the Libalua-Mostia Culture, which seems to represent a higher level of development than that prevailing in Europe at the time. Animal finds in the Upper Pleistocene possibly point to alternations of humid and dry climates. The Upper Palaeolithic at first brought progress in material culture, but while in Europe the upward trend continued, in the East the aforementioned climatic change and economic decline set in. This decline characterizes the whole of the Mezolithic Period, which brought but few technological changes and whose economy was based on food-gathering, hunting and fishing. In the Neolithic, the climate-bred economic crisis became sharper, but this was set off by the Neolithic Revolution — the transition to agriculture. We now find permanent settlements, sheep-breeding, new skills, such as well-boring, stone-polishing, basket-making, spinning and pottery; the cult of fertility and of the dead, graves containing funeral equipment, and a semi-realistic plastic art, The article is accompanied by a list of excavations carried out in Palestine and the neighbouring countries during the period under review.