The sprawling 11,500-year-old stone Göbekli Tepe complex in southeastern Anatolia, Turkey, is the earliest known temple in human history and one of the most important discoveries of Neolithic research. Researchers at Tel Aviv University and the Israel Antiquities Authority have now used architectural analysis to discover that geometry informed the layout of Göbekli Tepe’s impressive… Read More
For thousands of years, indigenous hunting societies have subsisted on specific animals for their survival. How have these hunter-gatherers been affected when these animals migrate or go extinct? To answer this and other questions, Tel Aviv University (TAU) researchers conducted a broad survey of several hunter-gatherer societies across history in a retrospective study published on… Read More
In 2012, a monumental Iron Age temple complex dating to the late 10th and early ninth centuries BCE was discovered at Tel Moẓa near Jerusalem by archaeologists of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The site, identified as the biblical city of Moẓa, within the boundary of the tribe of Benjamin (Joshua 18:26), served as an… Read More
The ancient Samaria ostraca — eighth-century BCE ink-on-clay inscriptions unearthed at the beginning of the 20th century in Samaria, the capital of the biblical kingdom of Israel — are among the earliest collections of ancient Hebrew writings ever discovered. But despite a century of research, major aspects of the ostraca remain in dispute, including their… Read More
Who exactly were the Aurignacians, who lived in the Levant 40,000 years ago? Researchers from Tel Aviv University, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and Ben-Gurion University now report that these culturally sophisticated yet mysterious humans migrated from Europe to the Levant some 40,000 years ago, shedding light on a significant era in the region’s history. The Aurignacian… Read More
Tel Aviv University researchers, in collaboration with scholars from Spain, have uncovered evidence of the storage and delayed consumption of animal bone marrow at Qesem Cave near Tel Aviv, the site of many major discoveries from the late Lower Paleolithic period some 400,000 years ago. The research provides direct evidence that early Paleolithic people saved… Read More
Genesis 36:31 describes an early, pre-10th century BCE Edomite kingdom: “… the kings who reigned in Edom before any Israelite king reigned.” But the archaeological record has led to conflicting interpretations of this text. Now a Tel Aviv University study published in PLOS One on September 18 finds that the kingdom of Edom flourished in… Read More
The Acheulian culture endured in the Levant for over a million years during the Lower Paleolithic period (1.4 million to 400,000 years ago). Its use of bifaces or large cutting tools like hand axes and cleavers is considered a hallmark of its sophistication — or, some researchers would argue, the lack thereof. A new Tel… Read More