Opportunism or aquatic specialization? Evidence of freshwater fish exploitation at ohalo II- a waterlogged upper paleolithic site

By: Zohar I., Dayan T., Goren M., Nadel D., Hershkovitz I.
Published in: PLoS ONE
SDGs : SDG 15  |  Units: Humanities  | Time: 2018 |  Link
Description: Analysis of ca. 17,000 fish remains recovered from the late Upper Paleolithic/early Epi-Paleolithic (LGM; 23,000 BP) wat erlogged site of Ohalo II (Rift Valley, Israel) provides new insights into the role of wetland habitats and the fish inhabiting them during the evolution of economic strategies prior to the agricultural evolution. Of the current 19 native fish species in Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), eight species were identified at Ohalo II, belonging to two freshwater families: Cyprinidae (carps) and Cichlidae (St. Peter fish). Employing a large set of quantitative and qualitative criteria (NISP, species richness, diversity, skeletal element representation, fragmentation, color, spatial distribution, etc.), we demonstrate that the inhabitants of Ohalo II used their knowledge of the breeding behavior of different species of fish, for year-round intensive exploitation. © 2018 Zohar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.