Ras El Kelb is a truncated seaside cave and Paleolithic settlement located on the low-lying () coast of Lebanon, north of Beirut. It is one of the oldest habitations found in the country.Copeland, Lorraine and Moloney, Norah (eds) (1998) The Mousterian Site of Ras el-Kelb, Lebanon BAR IS 706.
Rescue excavations were carried out in 1959 by Dorothy Garrod and G. Henri-Martin.Garrod, D. and Henri-Martin, G., Fouilles a Ras el-Kelb, Liban, 1959. Actes du 16eme Congres Prehistorique de France, Monaco, 1959. They dug 2 trenches named the 'Rail' and 'Tunnel' trenches, from which they recovered over 30,000 flint artefacts of a wide variety for statistical analysis from 22 geological layers.Garrod, D. and Henri-Martin, G., Rapport Preliminaire sur la fouille d'une grotte a Ras el Kelb, Liban, 1959, Bulletin du Musee de Beyrouth, XVI : 61-7, 1961. It was concluded that the sea had passed the level of the cave 3 times since its first dated habitation around 50,000 years BCE (52,000 years BP).Garrod, D., The Middle Paleolithic of the near East and the Problems of Mount-Carmel Man., Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society, 92 : 232–51, 1962.
They also discovered a tooth suggested to belong to a Neanderthal. It was suggested that the inhabitants were expert at hunting gazelle using the flints recovered.Copeland, Lorraine., The Middle Paleolithic of Adlun and Ras El Kelb (Lebanon): First results from a study of the flint industries, pp. 33-57, Paléorient, Volume 4, Number 4, 1978.
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