Israeli cave yields Stone Age kills
By Bruce Bower
From Montreal, at a joint meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society and the Society for American Archaeology
In October 2000, workers blasting soil to widen a highway near Tel Aviv blew off the top a cave that had been covered by dirt for thousands of years.
Archaeologists called to the site determined that the cave contained Stone Age artifacts. A fence now surrounds the cave’s opening as excavation proceeds.
It’s lucky that the discovery, called Qesem Cave, didn’t become road kill. It contains some of the oldest and best-preserved evidence of hunting by our evolutionary ancestors in the span of time from around 300,000 to 200,000 years ago, says Mary C. Stiner of the University of Arizona in Tucson. Stiner is analyzing Qesem Cave finds with Avi Gopher and Ran Barkai, both of Tel Aviv University.