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Prehistoric Galilee

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2015

Extract

The district with which we are concerned constitutes the northern section of Galilee between the Nahr-el-Kasmiyeh and the Merj Ayun to the north, and the plains of Haifa and Asochis (Sahel-el-Buttauf) and the Wadi Hammam to the south; to the east and west its boundaries are respectively the Jordan and the Mediterranean. The greater part of the region is occupied by a central limestone massif, the Galilean highlands, which rise in a series of terraces from the Jordan valley to a height of nearly 4000 feet above sea level, and then descend steeply to the Mediterranean coastal plain. Much of this country, especially on the western side of the watershed, is barren and uncultivable, but the high central plateau in the north from Yarun to Tibnin and the lower plateaux of Kades and Safsaf include some of the most productive corn-growing districts west of the Jordan. The beds of the larger valleys also, which even in summer are not entirely waterless, provide fertile garden land and are mostly highly cultivated. The more rocky parts of the region provide scant pasturage for flocks of goats, and in most places the olive is cultivated to a limited extent.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1927

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References

1 The highest peak, Jebel Jermuk, is 3934 feet above sea-level.

2 Lortet, La Syrie d’aujourd’hui. Paris, 1884.Google Scholar

3 La Géographie. Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, 17. Paris, 1908.Google Scholar

4 Rephaïm, Die vorgeschichtliche Kultur Palastinas und Phöniziern. Paderborn, 1917.Google Scholar

5 Lortet, l.c., p. 139.

6 Bovier Lapièrre, l.c., p. 78.

7 A preliminary notice on the Mugharet-el-Zuttiyeh appeared in the Bulletin of the British School of Archaeology, Jerusalem, no. VII, 1925. A complete report including a study of the human remains by Sir Arthur Keith and a report on the fauna by Miss D. M. Bate has just appeared.

8 An account of excavations at Mugharet-el-Emireh is included in the same volume as the Zuttiyeh report.

9 Karge, l.c., p. 95 ff.

10 Blanckenhorn, Die Steinzeit Palastina-Syriens und Nordafrikas in Das Land der Bibel. bd. 3, heft 5.Google Scholar

11 The fragments of human bone found by Zummoffen in a late palaeolithic cave site Antelyas north of Beyrout are too incomplete to afford any evidence. Cf. Anthropos, in, p. 213 ff.

12 Bovier Lapièrre, l.c., p. 78.

13 Mader, Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins, no. 37 (1914).Google Scholar

14 An isolated dolmen of this sunken type was found by the writer above the Wadi Farah near the village of Farah (plate 11).

15 Memoirs of the Survey of Western Palestine, 1, 253.Google Scholar Mader, l.c., p. 27.

16 Karge, l.c., p. 306 ff.