Archeological Issues in the Middle and Upper Paleolithic of the Levant and Its Neighboring Regions

Abstract

This chapter gives an introduction to the present volume, which presents overviews of the archeological data on the replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans in the Levant and its neighboring regions. The first part focuses on recent evidence from the Levant, the sec- ond part on the neighboring regions of the Caucasus, the Zagros, and South Asia. A total of 13 papers in this volume highlight the distinct nature of the cultural occurrences over the Middle and Upper Paleolithic periods of the Levant: they display a continuity and a mosaic of different lithic industries. This feature, hardly documented in the other regions discussed in this volume, reinforces the importance of the Levant as a special region in interpreting the RNMH phenomenon in West Asia. Keywords