Today, the oldest traces of human cultures are known from Eastern Africa. Recent discoveries set anew the questions of human and animal dispersal into Eurasia. Issuing from Africa, early humans migrated at different periods. During these migrations, the Middle East played a crucial role as a crossroads between the three continents.In fact, for more than 1.5 million years, Man has been present in the Levant. Alongside the corridor stretching from the River Jordan to the Orontes Valley, early Palaeolithic humans had favourable places for settlements and a natural route towards new horizons.

The Institute for Prehistory and Archaeological Science of the Basel University, together with the General Directorate of Syrian Antiquities have been carrying out for 25 years an extensive program of surveys and excavations in the Syrian Desert. These studies showed that this part of the world was also a very ancient land of settlement. In Central Syria the oldest industries are Oldowan cultures, yielding numerous unretouched flakes, pebble-tools and spheroids. Two major sites, Hummal and Ain al Fil, are located in the region of El Kowm between the Euphrates basin and the desert steppe stretching from Palmyra to Deir-ez-Zor.

In Syria and in the adjacent regions, the archaeological record from 1.8 to 0.6 million years points to at least three major waves of early migrations. The earliest dispersal involved core and flake industries (Oldowan) around 1.8 Ma. The second wave is related to early handaxes producers arriving possibly about 1.4 Ma ago. The third wave occurred around 1 - 0.8 Ma, and is represented by Acheulean groups who manufactured numerous elongated bifaces and sometimes large flake cleavers, especially on the foot of the Golan. The last phase (Middle Acheulean) took place after 600 000 years and made up the first general settlement of the whole Middle East.