Sites of Human Evolution at Mount Carmel: The Nahal Me’arot / Wadi el-Mughara Caves

Half a million years of the human story stack up in four caves on the western slopes of Mount Carmel. Tabun, Jamal, el-Wad and Skhul preserve a cultural sequence of unmatched duration, including the remarkable coexistence of Neanderthals and early anatomically modern humans within the same Mousterian framework, plus Natufian burials and early stone architecture marking the turn toward farming and herding. The caves were inscribed by UNESCO in 2012.