Neanderthals in Southwest Asia

Southwest Asian Neanderthals are Neanderthals that lived in Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the southernmost expanse of their known range. Although their arrival in Asia is not well-dated, early Neanderthals occupied the region apparently until about 100,000 years ago. At this time, Homo sapiens seems to have replaced them in one of the first anatomically modern expansions out of Africa. In their turn, starting around 80,000 years ago, Neanderthals seem to have replaced Homo sapiens in Southwest Asia. They inhabited the region until about 55,000 years ago.

In Southwest Asia, Neanderthals left well-preserved skeletal remains in Israel, Syria, and Iraq. Remains in Turkey, Lebanon, and Iran are fragmentary. No Neanderthal skeletal remain has ever been found to the south of Jerusalem, and although there are Middle Palaeolithic Levallois points in Jordan and in the Arabian peninsula, it is unclear whether these were made by Neanderthals or anatomically modern humans. Neanderthals further to the east, such as those found in Uzbekistan and Asian Russia are known as Central and North Asian Neanderthals.

As of 2013, although many more Neanderthal remains have been discovered in Southwest Asia than in North Asia, where genetic studies have succeeded, no attempt at extracting DNA from Southwest Asian Neanderthals has ever been successful.

As the Levant is the landbridge to Eurasia, Dmanisi remains in Georgia from 1.81 Ma suggest that hominins passed through the Levant some time before this (unless they crossed the Bab el-Mandeb strait into Arabia). The oldest known hominin specimen from the Levant, and from all the Middle East, is the Zuttiyeh skull, found by Francis Turville-Petre near the Sea of Galilee in 1927. It has not been dated, but lithic industries suggest it dates from 250-350 ka (Bar-Yosef 1992). Though it has some modern characteristics, it has been classified as a specimen of Homo heidelbergensis.

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