Lebanese faunal legacy collections uncover 400,000 years of woodland resilience and distinct hominin ecological strategies

Abstract

The Levant is a key biogeographic corridor, yet historical instability has limited research creating a polarization toward its southern region. To address this geographical bias, we reassessed three legacy faunal collections from Lebanon: Naame, Nahr Ibrahim, and Ras el-Kelb. For the first time, we obtained direct dates for these assemblages and, through zooarchaeological methods, dental wear analysis, and landscape modeling, reconstructed aspects of ungulate and hominin ecology and behavior. The results establish chronological control, defining one of the longest paleoecological records in the region spanning from ~400,000 to ~100,000 years ago, and reveal that productive Mediterranean woodland ecosystems persisted along the central Levantine coast throughout much of the Middle and Late Pleistocene, supporting diverse ungulate communities and enabling hominins to practice seasonal, habitat-specific hunting along coastal ecotones. Integrating these findings into the broader Levantine context reveals marked ecological differentiation between central and southern regions, challenging assumptions of regional uniformity and highlighting the importance of spatial variability in reconstructing Pleistocene paleoecology, human behavior, and biodiversity across this major dispersal corridor. Mediterranean woodlands persisted in coastal Lebanon for hundreds of millennia, supporting diverse ungulates and shaping distinct hominin foraging strategies, highlighting ecological contrasts with the southern Levant, as indicated by dating, faunal analysis, dental wear, and landscape modeling