Ohalo II: Ice Age Fisher-Hunter-Gatherer Camp on Sea of Galilee

Ohalo II is a prehistoric camp on the south-western shore of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, occupied about 23,000 years ago. Exposed when the lake level dropped in 1989, it preserved the remains of brush huts, grass bedding and tens of thousands of plant remains. These finds make it one of the most important sites for understanding how Ice Age hunter-gatherers used wild cereals long before farming began.

Discovery under the lake

The Sea of Galilee, also called Lake Kinneret, is a freshwater lake in the Jordan Rift Valley. Its level rises and falls with rainfall and water use. In 1989, after a dry period and heavy pumping, the water retreated and exposed burnt layers and stone tools near Ohalo Beach, about 9 kilometres south of Tiberias.

A team led by Dani Nadel of the University of Haifa excavated the site from 1989 to 1991. The lake later rose again and covered it. When the level fell once more between 1999 and 2001, the team returned for further work.

Because the camp had been sealed by lake sediments and water, plant material survived in conditions that rarely occur at sites of this age.

Huts and bedding

Archaeologists found the remains of six oval huts, each roughly a few metres across. They were built from branches of local trees and shrubs such as tamarisk, willow and oak, and at least some had been burnt. These are among the oldest well-preserved brush huts known anywhere.

In the floor of one hut, the team found a layer of grass stems and leaves laid around a central hearth. Published in 2004, this was described as the earliest known evidence of prepared bedding. Hearths, tool-making areas and rubbish zones outside the huts show how the camp space was organised.

A grave of an adult man was also found at the site. He was buried with care and showed signs of physical disabilities during life.

Wild cereals and early plant use

The excavations recovered around 90,000 plant remains belonging to more than 140 plant types, according to the main published studies. They include wild barley, wild emmer wheat, wild oats, fruits, nuts and many small grass seeds.

A flat grinding stone from one hut carried starch grains from wild barley and wheat. This suggests that people were processing grain into flour, possibly to make a form of dough. Flint blades with a distinctive polish, studied in 2016, have been interpreted as sickle blades used to cut cereal stalks.

In 2015 researchers reported that seeds of weeds typical of cultivated fields occurred alongside the cereals. They argued that the people of Ohalo II may have experimented with small-scale planting of wild cereals. This idea is debated, but it pushes some early steps towards cultivation back by more than 10,000 years.

Fishing and hunting

Despite the plant evidence, Ohalo II was the camp of mobile fisher-hunter-gatherers. Thousands of fish bones show that the lake was a major food source. People also hunted gazelle, fallow deer and many species of birds.

This “broad spectrum” diet, drawing on many different foods, was once thought to have developed only in later periods. Ohalo II shows that it existed in the Levant during the Last Glacial Maximum, the coldest phase of the last Ice Age.

Life by the lake during the Ice Age

Around 23,000 years ago the world was in the Last Glacial Maximum, when ice sheets reached their greatest extent in northern Europe and North America. The Levant was cooler and generally drier than today, but the Jordan Valley lakes remained an attractive place to live. The shoreline then lay close to the camp, which was later covered by rising water and lake sediments.

The people who lived at Ohalo II made small flint tools, including tiny bladelets that could be set into handles to make knives, arrows or sickles. Archaeologists link their tool-making style to the early Epipalaeolithic of the region, sometimes grouped with the Kebaran tradition.

Evidence from the plant remains suggests that the camp was used in more than one season of the year. Different plants ripen at different times, and their mix implies that people either stayed for long periods or returned repeatedly. This hints at a lifestyle less mobile than that of many Ice Age foragers.

Key people

Dani Nadel, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa, directed the excavations and led many of the main publications on the huts and the burial. The archaeobotanist Ehud Weiss of Bar-Ilan University led the study of the plant remains, which became one of the largest collections of its kind from any Palaeolithic site. Many other specialists, from zoologists to geologists, contributed to the long research programme.

Timeline

• c. 23,000 years ago: People build huts and live by the lakeshore; the camp is later burnt and abandoned.
• 1989: Falling lake levels expose the site near Ohalo Beach.
• 1989–1991: First excavations led by Dani Nadel.
• 1999–2001: Renewed excavations during another period of low water.
• 2004: Studies of the grass bedding and plant remains are published.
• 2015: Researchers report weed seeds suggesting trial cultivation of wild cereals.

Why it matters

Ohalo II offers a rare, almost complete picture of daily life in an Ice Age camp. It shows that people were harvesting and grinding wild cereals thousands of years before the Natufian culture and the Neolithic Revolution. The site helps explain how the knowledge that later made farming possible built up slowly over a very long time.