On Friday, 29 June 2012, the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO voted to list the Nahal Me'arot / Wadi el-Mughara Caves as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Site of Human Evolution at Mount Carmel in northern Israel consists of a group of prehistoric caves containing cultural deposits representing 500,000 years of human evolution. The caves contain evidence of the transition from a hunting-gathering lifestyle to agriculture and animal husbandry and, unique to this site, the existence of both Neanderthals and Early Anatomically Modern Humans within the same cultural framework.

Nahal Me'arot joins six other sites in Israel that have been designated World Heritage sites. The other sites are: Masada; the Old City of Acre; the White City of Tel-Aviv; Biblical Tels - Megiddo, Hazor and Beer Sheba; the Incense Route - Desert Cities in the Negev; and the Bahá’i Holy Places in Haifa and the Western Galilee.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs worked alongside the Israel National Commission for UNESCO of the Ministry of Education, the Hof HaCarmel Regional Council and the University of Haifa to get the site listed by the World Heritage Committee.
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