El Kowm

Coordinates: 35 ° 9 ′ 0 ″  N , 38 ° 49 ′ 0 ″  E

El Kowm​

Syria

El Kowm or Al Kawm ( Arabic الكوم, DMG al-Barely ) is a circular depression with a diameter of about 20 km in central Syria , where remains of human presence have been found that go back as much as a million years. Hunters and gatherers looked for them until 11,000 BC. Chr. Again and again. The oasis is located northeast of Palmyra near as-Suchna (السخنة). Their artifacts include Neolithic houses in two tells (residential mounds) and early irrigation systems from the period between 7000 and 6500 BC. A.

Excavations

In 1967 Maurits N. van Loon and Rudolph Henry Dornemann undertook the first probes in El Kowm I, which is a 3 hectare Tell. The excavators distinguished between five layers , which they could assign to the Early Neolithic (A), the Middle Neolithic (B, C), the Young Neolithic (D) and a post-Neolithic phase (E). From May 1967 to January 1968, the expedition known as Tokyo University Scientific Expedition to Western Asia led by archaeologist Hisashi Suzuki conducted surveys in Lebanon and Syria at almost the same time . She also came across artifacts from El Kowm, for example in Hummal .

A smaller tell, El Kowm II, was tackled by Danielle Stordeur between 1978 and 1987. She was able to prove the oldest irrigation and domestic water system there. From 1980 Jacques and Marie-Claire Cauvin, Lorraine Copeland , Francis Hours , Jean Marie Le Tensorer and Sultan Muhesen conducted further investigations.

From 1989 the Institute for Prehistoric and Scientific Archeology of the University of Basel worked together with the History Faculty of the University of Damascus , more precisely the Direction Générale des Antiquités et des Musées de Damas . The two institutes focused on the Old and Middle Paleolithic of El Kowm, at a site known as Nadaouiyeh Aïn Askar . Human traces from the time between 500,000 and 100,000 before today were found there, finally tools from Oldowan and Hummalien , which go back up to a million years. As a further culture, a layer could be assigned to the Yabrudien as well as an Acheuléen culture, which was provisionally called Tayacien , an archaeological culture that is more likely to be found in southern Palestine. Reduction techniques for pebble tools predominate here. Occasionally the name tabunias appears, after the Tabun cave in northern Israel (Tabun G), which, however, was better known through Neanderthal finds. Hummalien, Yabrudien, and Tayacien were tentatively assigned to the Early, Middle, and Late Middle Paleolithic.

In 1996 a skull fragment of Homo erectus , dated 450,000 years ago, was discovered in Nadaouiyeh Aïn Askar. It has Central Asian characteristics and could give clues to the migrations of this era.

In 2005 the people of Basel discovered a fossil fragment of a giant camel that was dated 150,000 years ago and that had been discovered at the Hummal site. It is a hitherto unknown species of camels . The Camelus moreli was discovered along with human artifacts. In 2006/7, a piece of a human thigh bone and teeth came to light, but they could not be assigned to Neanderthals with certainty . If this succeeds, Hummal would be the first site where Neanderthals would have lived in a steppe.

Daniela Hager made a number of attempts to prove the use of fire. It turned out that small bones and splinters were apparently used to maintain the fire.

The early residents hunted gazelles, horses and camels. Periods of drought repeatedly wiped out life over long periods of time. The site was finally used by hunters and gatherers around 11,000 BC. Abandoned BC.

Not until 7000 BC Neolithic peasants appeared. A fresco of this from 7000 to 6500 BC Chr. Presence could be exposed. The site shows similarities with Tell Abu Hureyra and Bouqras .

The paleobotanist Willem van Zeist was able to produce emmer and durum wheat for the first farmers of El Kowm I from around 6,300 BC. Prove. Danielle Stordeur was able to document even older finds, dating back to 7000 BC. Go back BC. Van Zeist assumed that a kind of irrigation system must have been developed in El Kowm I, which is also indicated by finds in El Kowm II. Stordeur believed that the nearby Qdeir was inhabited by nomads, while El Kowm I and II showed no signs of merely temporary settlement, but were permanently inhabited for half a millennium. Similar to Jericho , the irrigation systems let the rainwater from the neighboring mountains flow down to the fields.

In 2009, the oldest known human traces of the entire Levant were found in Aïn al Fil , about 3 km from El Kowm, almost 1.8 million years old.

literature

• Christoph Griggo, Eric Boëda , Stéphanie Bonlaurie, Heba Al Sakhel, Aline Emery-Barbier, Marie-Agnès Courty: Un exemple moustérien de haltes de chasse au dromadaire: la couche VI1a0 d'Umm el Tlel (El Kowm - Syrie centrale) , in : Haltes de chasse en Préhistoire. Quelles réalités archéologiques? Actes du colloque international du 13 au 15 may 2009, Université Toulouse II - Le Mirail , in: P @ lethnologie (2011) 103–129. ( online , PDF)
• Jean-Marie Le Tensorer , Thomas Hauck, Dorota Wojtczak, Peter Schmid, Daniel Schuhmann: Le paléolithique d'El Kowm, Syrie. Results de la campagne 2006-2007 , final report, Basel 2007.
• Thomas Hauck, Reto Jagher, Hélène Le Tensorer, Daniel Richter, Dorota Wojtczak: Research on the Paleolithic of the El Kowm area (Syria) , 2006.
• Jean-Marie Le Tensorer, Inge Diethelm, Swiss National Fund for Scientific Research, The University of Basel - Departement of Prehistory Archaeological Mission, Damascus University - Département of Prehistory Archaeological Mission: Le paléolithique d'El Kowm (Syrie): rapport 1995, 130 S., 1995.

Web links

• Mission archéologique syro-suisse d'El Kowm. Le paléolithique du désert syrien , Institute for Prehistoric and Scientific Archeology at the University of Basel
• Le Paléolithique d'El Kowm (Syrie) , University of Basel

Remarks

1. ^ Rudolph Henry Dornemann: A Neolithic village at Tell el Kowm in the Syrian Desert , Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1986.
2. ↑ After three months of preparation and within five months of on-site work, the expedition examined a total of 124 sites in Syria and 73 in Lebanon. The report (Hisashi Suzuki, Iwao Kobori (ed.): Report of the Reconnaisance Survey on Palaeolithic Sites in Lebanon and Syria , Bulletin 1, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 1970, I-VIII and 135 ff) includes 75 sites from Syria and 24 from Lebanon. According to the report, only two came from the Old Paleolithic, 15 from the Middle Paleolithic and four from the Upper Paleolithic; eight could not be assigned to any period. All other sites were younger.
3. ↑ Danielle Stordeur (ed.): El Kowm 2: une île dans le désert - La fin du néolithique précéramique dans la steppe syrienne , CNRS, Paris 2000.
4. ↑ Jean Marie Le Tensorer: Regional perspectives of early human populations in Syria: the case of El Kowm , in: Nuria Sanz (Ed.): Human Origin Sites and the World Heritage Convention in Eurasia , Vol. 1, UNESCO Publishing, 2015, Pp. 54–71, here: p. 63.
5. ↑ Peter Schmid, Philippe Rentzel, Josette Renault-Miskovsky, Sultan Muhesen, Philippe Morel, Jean Marie Le Tensorer, Reto Jagher: Découvertes de restes humains dans les niveaux acheuléens de Nadaouiyeh Aïn Askar (El Kowm, Syrie Centrale) , in: Paléorient 23 , 1 (1997) 87-93.
6. ^ Giant camel fossil found in Syria , BBC News, October 10, 2006.
7. ↑ Jean-Marie Le Tensorer, Thomas Hauck, Dorota Wojtczak, Peter Schmid, Daniel Schuhmann: Le paléolithique d'El Kowm, Syrie. Résultats de la campagne 2006-2007 , final report, Basel 2007, p. 13.
8. ↑ Sultan Muhesen: The Earliest Paleolithic Occupation in Syria , in: Takeru Akazawa, Kenichi Aoki, Ofer Bar-Yosef (ed.): Neandertals and Modern Humans in Western Asia , Kluwer, New York 2002, pp. 95-105.
9. ↑ Harm Tjalling Waterbolk: A Neolithic village at Tell el-Kowm in the Syrian Desert , in: Paléorient 13.2 (1987) 149-150.
10. ↑ Alison Betts: Review of Danielle Stordeur: El Kowm 2 , in: Paléorient, 27.1 (2001) 184 f. ( online )