Baruch Arensburg

Baruch Arensburg (born 1934 in Santiago, Chile), professor of Anatomy, ‎Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University (emeritus), is a physical ‎anthropologist[1] whose main field of study has been prehistoric and historic ‎populations of the Levant.‎

He studied at the Sorbonne University, Paris, Physical Anthropology and ‎Comparative Anatomy. At the Hebrew University of Jerusalem he gained ‎his degrees in the fields of Geography and Archaeology (B.A.) Geography ‎and Zoology (M.A.). He was the first to study the demographic sequence of ‎populations in the Land of Israel, starting with the Palaeolithic through the ‎Biblical, Classical, Roman, Byzantine periods to the present (PhD topic, ‎Anatomy and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University, 1974). Concurrently he ‎has been conducting on-going research of historic and recent Beduin ‎populations. ‎

He has participated in many archaeological excavations and co-directed ‎‎ (with Ofer Bar-Yosef and Eitan Tchernov), the excavations at Hayonim ‎Cave, mostly studying the Natufian (ca. 13,000 calBC) skeletal remains ‎discovered therein. He also was a team member of the Kebara Cave Middle ‎Palaeolithic project and was among those who studied and published the ‎Mousterian (ca. 60,000 years old) skeleton recovered on site– his own ‎research concentrating on the speech abilities of that individual, proving ‎that his hyoid bone is identical to that of modern humans. ‎ At the same time he has studied many samples of human remains dating to ‎the times of the Second Temple and is considered as the leading authority on the ‎Jewish population of ancient Israel. ‎

Selected bibliography

References

  1. ^ Lewin, Roger (1999). Human evolution: an illustrated introduction. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 196–. ISBN 9780632043095. http://books.google.com/books?id=HPHcNfBo3RQC&pg=PA196. Retrieved 18 June 2011.