The elephant remains were discovered alongside basalt handaxes and cleavers, hallmark tools of the Acheulian tradition, one of the earliest and most widespread stone-tool technologies in human history.
Credit: Tel-Hai University of Kiryat Shmona in the Galilee and Hannah Farrell, University of Haifa
Some 700,000 years ago, in what is now northern Israel, early humans were making stone tools in a landscape shared with giant elephants and exploiting their surroundings, hundreds of thousands of years before the supposed ‘Creation Week’ of young-Earth creationism.
That alone presents an insurmountable chronological problem for anyone who insists that Genesis is a literal account of history; a problem compounded by the fact that this history occurred close to where the origin myths in Genesis were written by people who were conspicuously ignorant of even their own local history.
Now, an elephant tooth has helped researchers reconstruct something of the world those people inhabited. A study published in Quaternary Science Reviews examines remains of the extinct straight-tusked elephant, Palaeoloxodon antiquus, found alongside Acheulean handaxes and cleavers at North Bridge Acheulian–Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov. By combining CT imaging, dental wear, isotope analysis and pollen evidence from the sediments, the researchers reconstructed a mosaic of woodland, grassland, wetlands and waterways.
The resulting picture is of a resource-rich environment that could support both large mammals and early human populations. Reliable water and varied vegetation apparently helped this part of the Hula Valley function as an ecological refuge along the Levantine corridor linking Africa and Eurasia. This was an inhabited landscape with an ecological history, rather than merely a collection of ancient bones and stones.
Nor does calling the deposits ‘Noah’s Flood debris’ resolve the difficulty. Any alternative explanation must account for the dated archaeological context and the agreement between the different environmental indicators; simply invoking a catastrophe explains neither. The study does not need to have been designed as a rebuttal of Genesis to expose the conflict. It is ordinary scientific research reconstructing an ancient environment — and, in doing so, adding detail to a history that a literal young-Earth reading of Genesis leaves no room to accommodate.
How an Elephant Tooth Becomes an Environmental Archive. A fossil tooth can preserve much more than evidence of the animal to which it belonged. Its structure, wear and chemical composition can reveal aspects of its diet and surroundings. Combined with evidence from the enclosing sediments, it helps researchers reconstruct a palaeoenvironment — an environment of the geological past.The discovery is also explained in a EurekAlert! report supplied by Tel-Hai University:
Several different windows into the past
Why combine the methods?
- CT scanning — looking inside without cutting. Computed tomography uses X-rays to build a three-dimensional picture of internal structures. In an elephant molar, this allows researchers to examine the arrangement of enamel and other dental tissues, helping them investigate its anatomy and identification without destroying the specimen.
- Dental wear — evidence of meals. Chewing changes the tooth’s surface. Wear patterns can help distinguish diets dominated by browsing on leaves and twigs from those involving more grazing on grasses. Interpretation requires comparisons with animals of known diet, because grit and other abrasive material can also affect wear.
- Carbon isotopes — chemical clues to vegetation. Plants incorporate different proportions of the stable isotopes carbon-12 and carbon-13, depending on their photosynthetic pathways and growing conditions. Some of this chemical signal passes into the tissues of animals that eat them. Tooth enamel can therefore preserve clues to diet and habitat. However, a carbon-isotope measurement is not a simple “grassland versus woodland” reading: many grasses share the same photosynthetic pathway as trees and shrubs.
- Oxygen isotopes — clues to water. Oxygen incorporated into a tooth reflects the animal’s body water, influenced by drinking water, food and physiology. Rainfall and evaporation affect environmental oxygen-isotope ratios, so these measurements can help investigate water sources and environmental conditions. They require ecological context rather than providing a direct reading of ancient temperature or rainfall.
- Fossil pollen — evidence beyond the elephant. Pollen preserved in sediments provides a separate record of surrounding vegetation. Identifying different pollen types helps researchers recognise woodland, open vegetation and wetland habitats. Because plants differ in how much pollen they produce and how far it travels, pollen assemblages must be interpreted rather than treated as an exact census of local plants.
Each method answers a different question and has its own limitations. Dental wear records aspects of feeding; enamel chemistry reflects conditions while the tooth was forming; sedimentary pollen samples vegetation over a different area and interval. Agreement between these records strengthens a reconstruction, while differences can reveal seasonal variation, animal movement or environmental change.
At North Bridge Acheulian–Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov, the elephant remains and associated sedimentary evidence helped researchers reconstruct a mixture of woodland, grassland, wetlands and waterways. The significance lies in the combination of evidence, rather than in any single measurement.
Reconstructing an environment is not the same as dating it. These analyses do not each independently establish an age of approximately 700,000 years. That chronology depends on the site’s dating and geological context. In particular, analysing stable carbon isotopes for dietary information is quite different from radiocarbon dating.
The Levantine corridor: a route between continents
The Levant occupies the eastern Mediterranean region, linked to Africa through Sinai and to the wider Eurasian landmass to the north and east. This position made it an important route for the dispersal of animals, including successive early human populations, between the continents. Movement could occur in both directions and across many separate episodes.
Geography alone, however, did not make passage easy. The availability of fresh water, food and suitable habitats changed with climate. Rivers, lakes and wetlands could provide places where populations survived and reproduced, allowing their ranges to expand over generations. Such dispersal need not have involved groups deliberately setting out for another continent.
The Hula Valley’s water-rich habitats may therefore have served both as a home and as an ecological refuge along this broader route. The elephant study helps explain what made this part of the corridor habitable; it does not, by itself, demonstrate a particular migration or identify the species of human that made the accompanying tools.
Short glossary
- Proxy
- Preserved evidence used to infer something that cannot be measured directly, such as ancient vegetation or water conditions.
- Isotope
- A form of an element with a particular number of neutrons. Stable isotopes do not undergo radioactive decay.
- Dental microwear
- Microscopic marks and textures on a tooth’s surface that can provide clues to feeding behaviour.
- Palaeoenvironment
- The environmental conditions and habitats that existed in a particular place in the geological past.
- Ecological refuge
- An area that retains conditions suitable for survival when surrounding areas become less favourable.
700,000-year-old elephant tooth reveals a lost ecosystem shared by early humans in the levant
Ancient tooth reveals a lost world inhabited by giant elephants and early toolmakers
A remarkably preserved elephant tooth previously recovered from Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (GBY-NBA) — a prehistoric site in northern Israel, where early humans made stone tools some 700,000 years ago — has now enabled researchers to reconstruct a lush landscape of woodlands, wetlands, and waterways from the Pleistocene. The findings provide a rare glimpse into the environment shared by giant elephants and some of the region's earliest human populations.
The study was conducted by PhD candidate Hannah Farrell of the University of Haifa at a site excavated by Prof. Gonen Sharon of Tel-Hai University of Kiryat Shmona in the Galilee.Credit: Tel-Hai University of Kiryat Shmona in the Galilee
and Hannah Farrell, University of Haifa.
The elephant remains were discovered alongside basalt handaxes and cleavers, hallmark tools of the Acheulian tradition, one of the earliest and most widespread stone-tool technologies in human history. Researchers combined multiple analytical techniques to reconstruct a resource-rich environment of woodlands, grasslands, wetlands, and waterways that helped sustain both large mammals and early humans along the Levantine land bridge connecting Africa and Eurasia.
Published in Quaternary Science Reviews, the study led by Hannah Farrell (a PhD candidate at Haifa University) focuses on findings from the excavation site of GBY-NBA by Prof. Gonen Sharon of Tel-Hai University of Kiryat Shmona in the Galilee and his colleagues. The research focuses on a giant elephant molar and tusk fragments discovered alongside Acheulian stone tools at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (Daughters of Jacob Bridge), located in the Jordan Rift Valley, south of today's Hula Valley in northern Israel. The remains belonged to Palaeoloxodon antiquus, the straight-tusked elephant, one of the largest land mammals of the Pleistocene. Rather than studying the elephant alone, researchers used the tooth as a biological archive to reconstruct the broader ecosystem shared by large mammals and early human toolmakers.
A remarkably preserved elephant tooth previously recovered from Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (GBY-NBA) — a prehistoric site in northern Israel, where early humans made stone tools some 700,000 years ago — has now enabled researchers to reconstruct a lush landscape of woodlands, wetlands, and waterways from the Pleistocene. The findings provide a rare glimpse into the environment shared by giant elephants and some of the region's earliest human populations.Credit: Tel-Hai University of Kiryat Shmona in the Galilee and Hannah Farrell, University of Haifa.
What an Ancient Ecosystem Reveals About Human Origins
Understanding how humans and animals responded to environmental change hundreds of thousands of years ago helps us better understand the forces that shaped our species.
Professor Gonen Sharon, co-author.
Tel-Hai University
Kiryat Shmona, Israel.
Using CT scanning, 3D reconstruction, microscopic wear analysis, isotope geochemistry, and pollen studies, the team found evidence for a long-lasting landscape of woodlands, grasslands, marshes, rivers, and shallow-water habitats. Carbon isotope values suggest the elephant lived in a consistently well-watered environment, while pollen recovered from sediments revealed abundant wetland vegetation, including reeds, sedges, willow, tamarisk, and aquatic plants.
The findings indicate that the Hula Valley region formed part of a stable ecological refuge within the Levantine Corridor, the land bridge connecting Africa and Eurasia. Such environments likely provided reliable water and biological resources for wildlife and human groups moving through the region during the Pleistocene.
The availability of water, vegetation, and animal resources shaped where humans and wildlife could survive. The wetlands, rivers, and woodlands of the Hula Valley helped sustain life along one of the world's earliest migration corridors, offering a rare opportunity to understand the ecological conditions that supported both animals and human populations nearly 700,000 years ago.
Professor Gonen Sharon.
The study was conducted by PhD candidate Hannah Farrell of the University of Haifa at a site excavated by Prof. Gonen Sharon of Tel-Hai University of Kiryat Shmona in the Galilee, in collaboration with Cheryl A. Makarewicz (isotope studies) and Nimrod Marom (archaeozoology) from the University of Haifa, along with Minji Jin and Dafna Langgut (pollen studies) from Tel Aviv University.
Publication:
Rather than studying the elephant alone, researchers used the tooth as a biological archive to reconstruct the broader ecosystem shared by large mammals and early human toolmakers.
The elephant remains were discovered alongside basalt handaxes and cleavers, hallmark tools of the Acheulian tradition, one of the earliest and most widespread stone-tool technologies in human history.
The remains belong to Palaeoloxodon antiquus, the straight-tusked elephant, one of the largest land mammals of the Pleistocene.
Credit: Tel-Hai University of Kiryat Shmona in the Galilee and Hannah Farrell, University of Haifa
The difficulty for young-Earth creationism is not simply that this landscape is too old. It is that the evidence reveals a coherent human and ecological history where a literal reading of Genesis allows none. Around 700,000 years ago, early humans were making Acheulean tools in a region whose vegetation, water resources and large mammals can now be investigated through physical evidence. Compressing that history into a few thousand years requires rejecting the scientific chronology, rather than explaining it.
Nor does invoking Noah’s Flood provide an alternative explanation. A claim of catastrophic deposition must still account for the archaeological context and the environmental information preserved in teeth and sediments. Calling everything “Flood debris” does not explain those observations, and it does nothing to reconcile the site’s age with biblical chronology. This study was not designed to test the Flood narrative, but its findings add detail to an ancient world that young-Earth creationism cannot accommodate.
What makes this research informative is the convergence of different kinds of evidence. Anatomy, dental wear, isotope chemistry and fossil pollen contribute distinct pieces to the reconstruction, each with limitations that researchers must consider. Science advances by comparing those pieces, testing interpretations and revising conclusions when necessary. Its account gains strength from being open to correction, rather than from being protected against it.
There is a particular irony in finding this evidence in the region where biblical traditions later developed. Long before anyone wrote the Genesis stories, elephants and early humans inhabited landscapes shaped by natural processes over immense spans of time. The task of science is to discover that history. The task facing biblical literalists is to explain why the physical record tells such a fundamentally different story.
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