Man in the middle Palaeolithic still lived in caves and subsisted on plants and animals in their natural condition. Expertly cracked human bones from which the coveted marrow was extracted point to cannibalistic practices. His implements, as before, are irregular flakes and rough chunks of flint which he employed as hand axes, scrapers, choppers and hammers. Social organization was rudimentary, centring on family groups.
This culture developed in a climate which was gradually becoming drier. Animal remains include, in addition to the rhinoceros and hippopotamus, the gazelle, spotted hyena, bear, camel, river hog and deer. Though the weather was warm and dry, permanent rivers still watered the country and some woody or scrubby areas persisted. In the later portion of the middle Palaeolithic a drastic alteration in climatic conditions took place involving heavy rainfall. Another wet period ensued, and lasted for tens of thousands of years, during which the fauna begins to assume a modern aspect. The scanty human traces from this rainy epoch are associated with rock shelters in Lebanon.
Throughout the long span of the late or upper Palaeolithic there is evidence of increased dryness interrupted by one damper interlude; warm and cool Mediterranean climates alternated. The culture is known from recent cave excavations near the Dog River, which have yielded human skeletal remains as well as those of deer, hyenas, rhinoceros, foxes and goats, with gazelle remains assuming a dominant place. While the industry in this epoch does not radically vary from the preceding, the stone implements manifest a tendency to diminish in size, indicating that man had begun to mount his tools in wooden or bone hafts. The wood, being perishable, left no traces, but bones suspected of such use have been discovered.
The Old Stone Age shades off imperceptibly into the New Stone Age, in which man used polished stone implements. The transitional period—termed Mesolithic, or
