New national park centered on prehistoric site officially opens to public

‘Ubeidiya National Park, near the Sea of Galilee, showcases a 1.6 million-year-old cache of early humans’ stone tools and bones of the animals they hunted, many now extinct

Gavriel Fiske is a reporter at The Times of Israel

  • Aerial view of the 'Ubeidiya site. (Emil Aladjem/IAA)
    Aerial view of the 'Ubeidiya site. (Emil Aladjem/IAA)
  • Zebra teeth from the 'Ubeidiya site excavations. (Yoli Schwartz/IAA)
    Zebra teeth from the 'Ubeidiya site excavations. (Yoli Schwartz/IAA)
  • 'Ubeidiya National Park dedication, April 4, 2024. (Shai Isaacs,/IAA)
    'Ubeidiya National Park dedication, April 4, 2024. (Shai Isaacs,/IAA)
  • Excavation site at 'Ubeidiya. (Yoli Schwartz/IAA)
    Excavation site at 'Ubeidiya. (Yoli Schwartz/IAA)
  • Hippopotamus ivory tusk from 'Ubeidiya. (Yoli Schwartz/IAA)
    Hippopotamus ivory tusk from 'Ubeidiya. (Yoli Schwartz/IAA)
  • 'Ubeidiya National Park. (Emil Aladjem/IAA)
    'Ubeidiya National Park. (Emil Aladjem/IAA)

A new national park — the ‘Ubeidiya National Park, in the Jordan Valley, just south of the Sea of Galilee — officially opened to the public following a dedication ceremony on Thursday.

The park is based around the ‘Ubeidiya prehistoric site, a 1.6 million-year-old repository of early humans’ stone tools and bones of the largely now-extinct animals they hunted.

The site, discovered by chance in 1959 by Izzy Merimsky, a nearby resident and nature guide who was present at the opening on Thursday, is “an archaeological site of world-class importance for researching human history — the earliest in the country and one of the earliest in the world outside of Africa,” the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a press release.

The site was largely abandoned after the last excavation in 1999, but renewed interest led to the development of the national park part of a larger effort to develop the lower Jordan River area, after years of neglect, into an modern swimming, recreational and tourist destination, the statement noted.

The excavations at ‘Ubeidiya revealed “early hominin remains; flint, limestone, and basalt tools,” along with “evidence of many kinds of wildlife, including giraffes, jaguars and hippopotami, and extinct species such as mammoths and saber-tooth tigers,” the IAA said.

The dedication ceremony officially opens the park to the public, but represents just the first of several planned phases of development for the area. It is expected that in the next phase, the original excavation site will be made accessible to visitors.

The ‘Ubeidiya site is one of the earliest known prehistoric sites outside of Africa. It has 30 geologic layers that contain evidence of human activity, making it key in understanding the development of early humanity and the first migrations out of Africa, although few human remains have been found there.

“The excellent preservation of the site’s material finds enables recreating the Jordan Valley’s early ecological conditions,” said researchers Prof. Omry Barzilai of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the University of Haifa, and Prof. Miriam Belmaker from the University of Tulsa.

“There is a unique broad selection of species to be found here, of which most are extinct, and which includes African fauna side-by-side with European species. The flint and stone tools at ‘Ubeidiya served its inhabitants to execute daily activities – butchering and cutting animal carcasses, processing vegetal foods and more. These represent the Acheulian culture, including hand axes, scrapers, chopping tools, and spheroids and polyhedrons,” the scholars noted.

The new ‘Ubeidiya National Park, located near Kibbutz Bet Zera, also includes the nearby Tell ‘Ubeidiya, a multi-layered archaeological site that was a walled city mentioned in the Bible and, according to some scholars, in an ancient Egyptian stele inscription by the pharoah Merneptah.

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